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A. 


MODERN  CRITICISM  AND  THE 
PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT 


By  GEORGE  ADAM  SMITH 

D.D.,  LL.D. 

The  Book  of  Isaiah.    2   vols. 

Vol.  1.,  Chapters  I.-XXXIX.  Vol.  II.,  Chapters 
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aniah,  Nahum,  Habakkuk,  Obadiah,  Haggai,  Zecha- 
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The   Historical   Geography  of   the   Holy 
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colored  maps,  specially  prepared.  Octavo,  cloth, 
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A.  C.  ARMSTRONG  &  SON 

NEW  YORK 


MODERN  CRITICISM 

AND    THE   PREACHING    OF 

THE  OLD  TESTAMENT 

Eight  Lectures  on  the  Lyman  Beecher 
Foundation,  Tale  University 

BY 

GEORGE  ADAM    SMITH,    D.D.,  LL.D. 

PROFESSOR    OF    OLD    TESTAMENT    LANGUAGE    AND    LITERATURE 
UNITED  FREE  CHURCH  OF  SCOTLAND  GLASGOW  COLLEGE 


NEW    YORK 
A.  C.    ARMSTRONG   AND    SON 

3   &  5   West   i8th   Street,  near  5th  Avenue 


MCM 


Copyright,  igoiy  by 
A.   C.   Armstrong  &  Son 


UNIVERSITY    PRESS     .   JOHN    WILSON 
AND     SON     •      CAMBRIDGE,     U.  S.   A. 


TO 

THE    REV.    TIMOTHY    DWIGHT,    D.D. 

PRESIDENT  OF  YALE  UNIVERSITY,   1 886- 1 899 

THE    REV.   GEORGE    P.  FISHER,    D.D. 

DEAN  OF  THE  DIVINITY  SCHOOL,   1895-190I 
AND 

THE  REV.  CHARLES  RAY  PALMER,  D.D. 

ONE   OF  THE   FELLOWS   OF  THE  UNIVERSITY 

THIS  VOLUME  OF  LECTURES 
DELIVERED  WHILE  THEY  WERE  IN   OFFICE 

IS   GRATEFULLY   DEDICATED 


PREFACE 

The  Eight  Lectures  in  this  volume  — or  at 
least   as   much   of   each  as   it  was  possible 
to    read    within    the    time    allotted— were 
delivered   before   Yale   University  in   1899. 
I   have   thought  it   best   to   leave   them  as 
Lectures:   that   is,   in   the  style  of  spoken 
discourse.     With    one    exception    they   are 
printed  as  they  were  prepared  for  delivery, 
but  I  have  worked  into  four  of  them  — 11., 
III.,  IV.  and  VI. — some  materials  from  books 
which  have  appeared  since  they  were  spoken  : 
Canon  Driver's  Essay  on  Hebrew  Authority 
in   Authority   and  ArchcEology,  Sacred  and 
Profane,  edited  by  Mr.  Hogarth ;  Professor 
Budde's  Lectures  on  the  Religion  of  Israel 
before   the    Exile;    and    Professor   Charles' 
Jowett  Lectures,  entitled  A  Critical  History 
of  the  Doctrine  of  a  Future  Life.     Lecture 
VII.  on   the   Preaching  of  the  Prophets  to 

vii 


viii  PREFACE 

their  own  Times  has  been  wholly  rewritten 
in  order  to  introduce  a  detailed  account 
(of  which  only  a  brief  summary  could  be 
spoken)  of  the  Influence  of  the  Prophets 
upon  the  Social  Ethics  of  Christendom. 
In  the  Introduction  and  in  Lectures  i., 
III.,  IV.  and  VII.  there  are  some  paragraphs 
from  an  address  on  The  Preaching  of  the 
Old  Testament  to  the  Age,  delivered  in 
1892,  and  now  out  of  print. 

The  objects  of  the  Lectures  are,  in  the 
main,  three:  a  statement  of  the  Christian 
right  of  criticism  ;  an  account  of  the  modern 
critical  movement  so  far  as  the  Old  Testa- 
ment is  concerned ;  and  an  appreciation  of 
its  effects  upon  the  Old  Testament  as 
history  and  as  the  record  of  a  Divine 
Revelation.  Obviously  eight  Lectures  can- 
not provide  an  exhaustive  treatment  of  these 
themes ;  but  the  Lectures  contain,  I  trust, 
enough  to  serve  their  purely  practical  aim, 
and  to  exhibit  to  students  and  preachers 
the  religious  effects  of  the  critical  inter- 
pretation of  the  larger  half  of  the  Scriptures 


PREFACE  ix 

of  the  Church.  In  the  Fourth  Lecture  the 
line  of  argument  is  intended  for  believers 
in  the  Christian  doctrine  of  Revelation. 
I  have  always  felt  that  for  those  who 
believe  in  the  Incarnation  the  fact  of  a 
Divine  Revelation  through  the  religion  of 
early  Israel,  as  critically  interpreted,  ought 
not  to  be  unintelligible.  If  we  recognise 
that  God  was  in  Christ  revealing  Himself 
to  men  and  accomplishing  their  redemption, 
it  cannot  be  difficult  for  us  to  understand 
how  at  first,  under  the  form  of  a  tribal 
deity  —  the  only  conception  of  the  Divine 
nature  of  which  at  the  time  the  Semitic 
mind  was  capable  —  He  gradually  made 
known  His  true  character  and  saving 
grace. 

In  connection  with  the  subject  of  Lecture 
v.,  '  The  Spirit  of  Christ  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment,' I  desire  to  acknowledge  my  indebted- 
ness to  the  late  Principal  Patrick  Fairbairn's 
The  Typology  of  Scripture  (2  vols.,  6th 
edition,   Edinburgh    1876).     It    is    a   work 

distinguished  not  less  by  sagacious  criticism 

b 


X  PREFACE 

of  the  older  theories  of  typology  than  by 
original  insight  into  the  ethical  virtue  of  the 
institutions  of  Israel.  Although  constructed 
upon  lines  not  followed  by  the  critical  in- 
terpretation of  the  Old  Testament,  it  not 
seldom  anticipates  methods  and  ideas  which 
have  only  recently  passed  into  acceptance. 

GEORGE  ADAM   SMITH. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

PREFACE, Vii 

INTRODUCTION, I 


LECTURE  I 

THE  LIBERTY  AND  DUTY  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 
CRITICISM  AS  PROVED  FROM  THE  NEW  TESTA- 
MENT,       .  5 

LECTURE  II 

THE      COURSE      AND       CHARACTER       OF      MODERN 

CRITICISM, 29 

L  The  General  Course  of  Modern  Criticism,  .  31 
II.  The  Criticism  of  the  Old  Testament  mainly 

Historical, 46 

III.  Criticism  and  Archaeology, 56 

LECTURE  III 

THE  HISTORICAL  BASIS   IN   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT,        .         73 

LECTURE  IV 

THE    PROOF    OF    A    DIVINE     REVELATION    IN    THE 

OLD   TESTAMENT, HO 


xii  CONTENTS 


LECTURE  V 

FAGB 

THE  SPIRIT  OF  CHRIST  IN  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT,       .      1 45 

I.  From  the  Earliest  Times  to  David,     .     .     .     148 
II.  The  Prophets, 158 

LECTURE  VI 

THE  HOPE  OF  IMMORTALITY  IN  THE  OLD  TESTA- 
MENT,     177 

I.  The  Old  Testament  Data, 178 

II.  The  Historical  Explanation, 191 

m.  The  Use  to  Our  Own  Day, 209 

LECTURE    VII 

THE  PREACHING  OF  THE  PROPHETS  TO  THEIR 
OWN  TIMES  :  WITH  SOME  ACCOUNT  OF  THEIR 
INFLUENCE  UPON  THE  SOCIAL  ETHICS  OF 
CHRISTENDOM, 215 

I.  The    Influence  of    the    Prophets    on    the 

Christian  Church  and  Civilization,     .     .     216 
II.  The  Political  and  Social  Preaching  of  the 

Prophets, 265 

III.  Other  Features  of  the  Prophets'  Preaching,     274 

LECTURE    VIII 

THE     CHRISTIAN     PREACHER     AND      THE     BOOKS     OF 

WISDOM, 283 


INTRODUCTION 

To  follow  the  long  succession  of  men  who  have 
filled  this  lectureship,  and  to  attempt  —  in  re- 
sponse to  your  call  —  some  addition  to  their 
numerous  illustrations  of  the  genius  and  office 
of  the  preacher,  involves  an  adventure  which  can 
be  justified  only  by  one  or  other  of  the  following 
considerations. 

First,  that  of  so  wide  a  field  as  that  of  the 
Christian  pulpit,  there  is  some  portion  which, 
though  not  altogether  neglected  by  my  prede- 
cessors, has  received  from  none  of  them  a  parti- 
cular or  exclusive  treatment.  Or  secondly,  that, 
in  some  department  of  the  subject  the  materials 
have  passed  through  those  furnaces  of  criticism 
which  our  generation  has  so  zealously  fired,  and 
have  there  undergone  changes  that  render  im- 
perative some  new  appreciation  of  them  for  the 
purposes  of  practical  religion. 

I  believe  that  for  the  subject  I  have  chosen, 
not  only  one  but  both  of  these  reasons  are 
urgent.  None  of  my  predecessors  has  attempted 
a  full  exposition  of  the  material  which  the 
Old  Testament  offers  to  the  Christian  preacher. 


2  MODERN   CRITICISM  AND  THE 

This  fact  alone  might  have  determined  the  sub- 
ject of  the  following  course  ;  but  at  the  same 
time,  as  every  one  is  aware,  there  is  no  part  of 
the  preacher's  field  or  material  which  has  been 
the  object  of  more  industrious  research  or  of 
more  unsparing  criticism  than  the  several  Books 
of  the  Old  Testament,  and  the  national  history 
of  which  they  form  the  record.  For  over  a  cen- 
tury every  relevant  science,  every  temper  of 
faith,  and,  one  might  add,  almost  every  school 
of  philosophy,  have  shot  across  this  narrow  field 
their  opposing  lights  :  under  which  there  has  been 
an  expenditure  of  individual  labour  and  ingenuity 
greater  than  has  been  devoted  to  any  other  litera- 
ture of  the  ancient  world,  or  to  any  other  period 
in  the  history  of  religion.  No  memory  or  institu- 
tion of  Israel,  no  chapter  or  verse  of  her  sacred 
texts  has  escaped  this  strenuous  revision :  nor, 
with  the  exception  of  the  New  Testament,  is  there 
any  field  on  which  such  revision  could  have  raised 
questions  of  more  moment  for  the  practical  re- 
ligion with  which  the  duty  of  the  preacher  is 
identified.  Beyond  the  problems  of  integrity 
and  authenticity,  in  the  narrower  sense  of  these 
terms ;  beyond  the  greater  question  how  much 
actual  history  has  been  left  to  us  in  the  Old 
Testament  by  the  processes  of  criticism,  there 
remains  the  most  important  interest  of  all :  Can 
we  still  receive  the  Old  Testament  as  the  record 
of  a  genuine  revelation  from  God  ?     But  indeed 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    3 

your  own  experience  more  than  any  words  of 
mine  will  have  convinced  you  of  the  practical 
value,  at  this  time,  of  some  attempt  to  appreciate 
the  effects  of  criticism  upon  the  inspiration 
and  material  for  preaching  which  the  Christian 
Church  has  always  drawn  from  the  larger  half  of 
her  canonical  Scriptures. 

Before  we  begin,  it  is  well  that  we  should 
impress  ourselves  with  the  sacredness  of  the 
task  which  we  propose.  This  is  no  common 
ground  we  are  to  be  treading.  It  is  not  some 
outlying  province  of  the  Kingdom  of  God,  some 
questionable  frontier  of  our  fatherland,  which  we 
are  called  to  debate ;  but  (if  I  may  continue  the 
figure)  it  is  that  country  of  which  our  Redeemer 
was  Himself  a  native ;  whose  character  He 
defined  in  absolute  contrast  to  the  rest  of  the 
world ;  whose  history  He  interpreted  as  the 
Divine  preparation  for  His  own  Advent ;  whose 
laws  He  fulfilled  as  the  expression  of  the 
everlasting  righteousness  of  God  ;  and  much  of 
whose  language  He  perpetuated  in  the  wider 
Kingdom  He  came  to  found. 

In  short,  it  is  with  Christ's  Bible  we  have 
to  do  ;  the  larger  part  of  the  Scriptures  be- 
queathed to  His  Church ;  and  we  have  to  do 
with  this  not  simply  in  its  historical  interest  but 
in  its  religious  value  for  living  men. 

The  Old  Testament,  one  cannot  too  often  re- 
member, lies  not  under  but  behind  the  New.     It 


4  MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

is  not  the  quarry  of  the  excavator  or  archaeologist 
—  a  mere  foundation  packed  away  out  of  sight 
beneath  the  more  glorious  structure  which  has 
been  reared  upon  it.  Far  rather  —  if  I  may  borrow 
a  metaphor  from  the  political  geography  of  the 
day  —  far  rather  is  the  Old  Testament  the 
'  Hinterland '  of  the  New :  part  of  the  same 
continent  of  truth,  without  whose  ampler  areas 
and  wider  watersheds  the  rivers  which  grew  to 
their  fulness  in  the  new  dispensation  could  never 
have  gained  one-tenth  of  their  volume  or  their 
influence.  And  upon  that  vast  Hinterland  the 
Gentile  Church  of  Christ,  passing  to  it  across 
the  New  Testament,  has  settled  and  been  at 
home  for  centuries  ;  has  found  in  it  her  school 
and  her  sanctuary  ;  has  met  with  her  God,  has 
breathed  the  air  of  His  righteousness  and  heard 
His  words,  as  powerful  as  when  they  were  first 
uttered,  to  move  men  to  repentance  and  faith  in 
God  and  the  hope  of  an  endless  life. 

It  is  upon  all  this  —  Christ's  Bible  and  the 
Church's  Bible,  Christ's  Fatherland  and  the 
Church's  Fatherland  —  that  we  are  called  to 
estimate  the  effect  of  one  of  the  most  thorough 
intellectual  processes  of  our  time. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    5 


LECTURE   I 

THE  LIBERTY  AND   DUTY   OF   OLD  TESTAMENT 

CRITICISM  AS   PROVED   FROM  THE 

NEW  TESTAMENT 

Few  realise  that  the  Church  of  Christ  possesses 
a  higher  warrant  for  her  Canon  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment than  she  does  for  her  Canon  of  the  New. 

The  New  Testament  Scriptures  were  selected 
and  defined,  no  man  exactly  knows  how,  except 
that  it  was  the  Church  herself  which  did  the 
work.  The  formal  decrees  of  Councils^  appear 
to  have  been  only  confirmatory  of  the  common 
use  and  practice  of  the  Church  under  the 
guidance  of  her  Lord's  Spirit.  This  practice 
had  risen  gradually  and  with  differences  in 
different  parts  of  Christendom.  The  Church 
was  the  recipient  of  a  number  of  writings,  some 
anonymous,  but  the  most  bearing  the  name  of 
an  apostle  or  of  a  disciple  of  the  apostles.  From 
these  a  selection  was  slowly  effected,  partly  by 
the   spiritual   taste   and   insight   of   the   various 

1  The  Canon  was  discussed  and  defined  by  the  great  Coun- 
cils of  the  fourth  century.  The  Third  Council  of  Carthage, 
397  A.D.,  recognised  our  present  New  Testament. 


6  MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

congregations,  partly  on  the  strength  of  tradition, 
and  partly  by  the  opinions  and  discussions  of 
the  doctors  of  the  Church.^  That  is  to  say,  the 
New  Testament  Canon  was  a  result  of  criticism 
in  the  widest  sense  of  the  word. 

But  what  the  Church  thus  once  achieved,  the 
Church  may  at  any  time  revise.  As  a  matter  of 
fact  she  has  never  renounced  her  liberty  to  do 
so,  and  it  has  not  been  heretics  alone  who  have 
disputed  the  rights  of  certain  books  to  belong 
to  the  New  Testament.  To  mention  but  a  few 
instances,  Gregory  and  Zwingli  both  rejected  the 
Apocalypse,  and  Luther  the  Epistle  of  St.  James. 
Augustine  testifies  that  all  the  authorities  of  his 
time  were  not  agreed  as  to  the  Canon,'^  and  even 
Calvin  appears  to  leave  the  question  still  open.^ 

These  are  enough  to  recall  to  us,  that  what 
was  the  decision  of  the  Church's  criticism  at  the 
beginning  is  not  beyond  the  Church's  criticism 
now,  unless  indeed  we  have  ceased  to  beheve  in 
that  education  of  the  Spirit  which  Christ  promised 
to  His  people,  and  refuse  to  employ  the  finer 

1  The  most  summary  evidence  of  the  gradual  criticism  and 
selection  which  led  to  the  formation  of  the  New  Testament  Canon 
is  found  in  Eusebius,  Hist.  Eccl.  (325  a.d.),  bk.  iii.  25:  where 
the  undisputed  books  are  distinguished  from  the  disputed  and  the 
spurious.  Among  the  still  disputed  books,  Eusebius  places  James, 
Jude,  2nd  Peter,  2nd  and  3rd  John,  Hebrews,  and  the  Apocalypse. 
He  himself  appears  to  question  the  Apocalypse. 

2  De  Doctrina  Christiana. 

3  Antidote  to  the  Council  of  Trent:  4th  Session.  Cf.  Institut. 
iv.  9,  §  14. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT     7 

instruments  of  criticism  which  God's  providence 
has  put  into  their  hands  to-day. 

So  it  was  with  the  growth  of  the  Canon  of  the 
New  Testament,  and  what  I  wish  to  emphasise  is 
that —  with  one  important  exception —  the  Canon 
of  the  Old  Testament  came  to  us  in  no  other 
way.  We  are  ignorant  of  vast  stretches  of  its 
history;  but  we  know  enough  to  be  sure  that  the 
theory  of  its  origin  which  lately  prevailed  among 
Protestants,  and  which  ascribed  the  Canon  of  the 
Old  Testament  to  a  single  decision  of  the  Jewish 
Church  in  the  days  of  her  inspiration,  is  not  a 
theory  supported  by  facts.  The  growth  of  the 
Old  Testament  as  a  Canon  was  very  gradual.^ 

Virtually  it  began  in  the  reign  of  King  Josiah 
in  621  B.C.,  with  the  acceptance  by  all  Judah 
of  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy  as  the  divine  law 
of  their  life,  and  its  first  stage  was  completed  by 
the  similar  adoption  of  the  whole  Law,  or  first 
five  Books  of  the  Old  Testament,  under  Nehemiah 
in  445  B.C.  When  the  other  two  divisions  were 
added  is  somewhat  uncertain  :  the  Prophets  ^  pro- 
bably before  200  B.C.,  and  the  Hagiographa  ^  f rom 

1  The  text-book  in  English  on  the  subject  is  that  by  Professor 
Ryle  of  Queen's  College,  Cambridge,  The  Canon  of  the  Old 
Testament.  See  also  the  article  by  Professor  Budde  in  The 
Encyclopedia  Biblica,  vol.  i. 

2  That  is,  according  to  the  division  of  the  Hebrew  Bible, 
Joshua,  Judges,  Books  of  Samuel  and  Kings  ;  Isaiah,  Jeremiah, 
Ezekiel,  and  the  Book  of  the  Twelve  Prophets. 

^  The  Psalms,  Proverbs,  Job,  Canticles,  Ruth,  Lamentations, 
Ecclesiastes,  Esther,  Daniel,  Ezra,  Nehemiah,  and  Chronicles. 


8  MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

a  century  to  two  centuries  later.  The  strict 
definition  of  the  third  division  was  not  complete 
by  the  time  of  Christ,  nor  was  the  selection  of 
the  whole  twenty-two  (or  twenty-four)  Books 
effected  either  before  or  after  that  time  by  a 
miraculous  decree  from  Heaven,  or  by  any 
decision  of  a  Jewish  Council.  The  only  decision 
of  the  kind  which  is  known  to  history  is  that 
said  to  have  been  made  by  a  Synod  of  Jamnia 
in  90  A.D.,  and  this  Synod  appears  to  have 
provided  merely  a  few  puerile  reasons  for  con- 
firming the  canonicity  of  certain  Books,  which 
had  already  for  nearly  two  centuries  enjoyed 
the  reverence  of  the  people.  In  contrast  to  this 
tardy  and  partial  influence  of  a  Council,  it  is 
very  probable  that  what  secured  to  the  Prophets 
and  the  Hagiographa  their  canonical  rank,  was 
their  inherent  worth  and  vitality  as  tested  by 
popular  use.  True,  it  may  have  been  necessary 
that,  before  the  authority  of  some  of  these  Books 
was  recognised,  they  should  be  proved  to  be 
ancient,  and  should  wear,  like  the  Law,  the 
name  of  some  great  Prophet  in  Israel;  and  it 
is  also  true  that  this  notion  may  have  led  to 
errors  about  their  date  and  authorship,  which  we 
are  only  now  able  to  correct.  But  it  was  not 
the  famous  names  they  wore  which  buoyed  these 
Books  upon  the  reverence  of  the  Church;  for 
other  writings,  which  we  know,  wear  the  same 
names,   but  have  not  therefore  been  lifted   into 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT     9 

the  Canon.  Nor  was  the  alleged  antiquity  of 
the  Books  indispensable  or  conclusive.  The 
early  collections  of  Israel's  songs  have  not  sur- 
vived; while  the  Maccabean  Psalms  must  have 
been  received  into  the  Canon  at  a  date  at  which 
their  recent  origin  was  still  remembered.  But 
the  Maccabean  Psalms  were  associated  with  a 
great  deliverance  of  His  people  by  God;  and 
all  the  rest  of  the  literature,  which  was  really 
ancient,  had  won  the  proof  of  its  divinity 
either  by  the  vindication  of  its  predictions  by 
history,  or  by  the  power  it  evinced  of  living 
and  giving  life  from  age  to  age.  Without  such 
effects  and  testimonies  in  the  experience  of  the 
nation,  no  name,  whether  it  really  belonged  to  a 
book  or  had  been  thrust  upon  it,  no  ascription  of 
antiquity  and  no  official  decree  could  have  availed 
to  bestow  canonical  rank.  Not  learned  discussion 
by  scribes  and  doctors,  whose  reasons,  so  far  as 
they  have  come  down  to  us,  are  all  afterthoughts 
and  mostly  foolish  ones,  but  proof  beneath  the 
strain  of  time,  persecution,  and  the  needs  of  each 
new  age  —  these  were  what  proved  the  truth  of  a 
Book,enforced  its  indispensableness  to  the  spiritual 
hfe  of  God's  people,  or  to  their  national  discipline, 
and  declared  the  will  of  Providence  regarding  it. 
In  short,  we  see  the  same  processes  at  work  for 
the  formation  of  the  Canon  of  the  Old  Testament 
as  we  do  for  that  of  the  New. 
Yet,  as  I  have  said,  the  Old  Testament  Canon 


lo         MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

is  accredited  in  addition  by  an  authority,  of 
which  the  New  Testament  is  devoid.  This  is  the 
authority  of  Jesus  Christ  Himself.  In  the  days 
of  our  Lord,  the  Scriptures  of  the  Jewish  Church 
were  practically  the  same  which  form  our  Old 
Testament,  arranged  as  they  still  are  in  the 
Jewish  Bible  in  the  three  divisions  of  Law, 
Prophets,  and  Hagiographa,  beginning  with 
Genesis  and  ending  with  Chronicles.  The  New 
Testament  writers  take  for  granted  that  there  is 
a  well-known  and  definite  body  of  Scriptures, 
which  is  quoted  by  Christ  Himself  as  the  Law, 
the  Prophets,  and  the  Psalms.^  We  do  not  indeed 
know  the  exact  contents  of  that  third  division, 
to  which  Christ  gave  the  name  of  its  most  con- 
spicuous member.  On  the  one  hand,  the  Book 
of  Daniel  —  with  the  exception  of  certain  Psalms, 
the  latest  Book  of  all  —  is  frequently  acknow- 
ledged by  New  Testament  writers;  and  Christ 
Himself  seems  to  testify  to  the  limits  of  the 
Hebrew  Canon,  exactly  as  they  now  lie  in  Genesis 
and  Chronicles.2  But,  on  the  other  hand,  neither 
our  Lord  nor  the  Apostles  make  any  quotation 
from  Ezra,  Nehemiah,  Esther,  Canticles  or 
Ecclesiastes,  the  three  last  of  which  Books  were 
not  yet  recognised  by  all  the  Jewish  schools. 

This  possible  deduction,  however,  is  insignifi- 
cant, and  we  do  not  exaggerate  if  we  say  that  the 

1  Luke  xxiv.  44. 

2  Matt,  xxiii.  35,  compared  with  Gen.  iv.and  2  Chron.  xxiv.  21. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT     ii 

Bible  of  the  Jews  in  our  Lord's  time  was  practi- 
cally our  old  Testament.  For  us  its  supreme 
sanction  is  that  which  it  received  from  Christ 
Himself.  It  was  the  Bible  of  His  education  and 
the  Bible  of  His  ministry.  He  took  for  granted 
its  fundamental  doctrines  about  creation,  about 
man  and  about  righteousness ;  about  God's 
Providence  of  the  world  and  His  purposes  of 
grace  through  Israel.  He  accepted  its  history  as 
the  preparation  for  Himself,  and  taught  His  dis- 
ciples to  find  Him  in  it.  He  used  it  to  justify  His 
mission  and  to  illuminate  the  mystery  of  His 
Cross.  He  drew  from  it  many  of  the  examples 
and  most  of  the  categories  of  His  gospel.  He 
re-enforced  the  essence  of  its  law  and  restored 
many  of  its  ideals.  But  above  all,  He  fed  His 
own  soul  with  its  contents,  and  in  the  great  crises 
of  His  life  sustained  Himself  upon  it  as  upon 
the  living  and  sovereign  Word  of  God.  These 
are  the  highest  external  proofs  —  if  indeed  we 
can  call  them  external  —  for  the  abiding  validity 
of  the  Old  Testament  in  the  life  and  doctrine 
of  Christ's  Church.  What  was  indispensable  to 
the  Redeemer  must  always  be  indispensable  to 
the  redeemed. 

But  while  we  look  to  Christ  as  the  chief 
Authority  for  our  Old  Testament,  we  must  never 
forget  that  He  was  also  its  first  Critic.  He  came 
to  a  people,  who  lived  under  a  strict  and  literal 
enforcement  of  the   Law;    and  whose  religious 


12         MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

leaders  at  the  time  aggravated  the  strictness  and 
complexity  of  the  Law  by  a  mass  of  tradi- 
tional precepts.  Not  only  did  Jesus  reject 
these  traditions.  He  equally  rejected  some 
parts  of  the  Law  itself,  and  directed  His  own 
conduct  in  sovereign  indifference  to  many  other 
parts.  This  statement  is  not  contradicted  by  the 
well-known  verses  :  Think  not  that  I  came  to 
destroy  the  Law  or  the  Prophets  ;  I  came  not  to 
destroy  but  to  fidfil.  For  verily  I  say  unto  yoUy 
Till  Heaven  and  earth  pass  away,  one  jot  or  one 
tittle  shall  in  no  wise  pass  from  the  Law  till  all 
be  accomplished}  If,  as  most  critics  allow,  the 
second  of  these  verses  be  a  genuine  utterance  of 
our  Lord,  its  words  must  be  interpreted  by  His 
own  definition  of  what  the  Law  was.  Christ 
effected  that  definition  in  various  ways.  Upon 
more  than  one  occasion  He  extracted  the  ideal 
or  essential  part  of  the  Law  and  defined  it  as 
the  whole  :  Whatsoever  ye  wish  that  men  should 
do  to  you,  so  also  do  ye  to  them,  for  this  is  the  Law 
and  the  Prophets  ;  ^  and  again :  Thou  shall  love 
the  Lord  thy  God  with  all  thy  heart,  and  thy  soul, 
and  thy  mind,  and  thy  neighbour  as  thyself.  On 
these  two  commandments  hangeth  all  the  law.^ 
Sometimes  He  took  special  precepts  of  the  Law, 
like  the  sixth  and  seventh  Commandments,  and 
enforced  a  fulfilment  of  them  far  beyond  their 

1  Matt.  V.  17,  18.  2  Matt.  vii.  12. 

3  Matt.  xxii.  40. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT     13 

literal  meaning.^  Or  He  took  the  rigorous 
precept,  ait  eye  for  an  eye^  and  a  tooth  for  a  toothy 
or  the  statement  which  is  not  found  in  the  Old 
Testament  in  so  many  words,  but  which  ex- 
presses the  temper  of  much  of  the  Law:  Thou 
shalt  love  thy  neighbour  and  hate  thine  enemy} 
and  He  reversed  them.  Or  He  took  the  law  of 
divorce  and  declared  it  to  have  been  temporary, 
granted  to  a  rude  age  of  the  nation's  develop- 
ment and  now  to  be  abrogated.^  Or  He  ascribed 
the  character  of  transitoriness  to  the  whole  of 
the  Old  Testament:  the  law  aitd  the  prophets  were 
till  John;  from  that  time  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is 
preached}  That  is  to  say,  a  new  dispensation 
had  opened,  in  which  the  older  revelation  enjoyed 
no  longer  the  same  rank  or  significance. 

Jesus,  it  is  true,  rendered  obedience  to  many 
of  the  formal  statutes.  He  paid  the  Temple- 
tax,^  and  commanded  the  Leper  whom  He  cured 
to  show  himself  to  the  priest  and  offer  the  gift 
which  Moses  commaiided^  But  these  and  other 
details  He  enforced  on  the  ground  not  of  principle 
but  of  expediency,  and  in  order  to  prevent 
needless  scandals  in  the  way  of  others."^  The 
expediency  was  due  to  the  circumstances  of 
His  own  time,  and  with  these  would  pass  away. 

1  Matt.  V.  21  ff.  anger ;  27  ff.  lust.        2  Matt.  v.  38  ff.,  43  £f. 

3  Matt.  V.  31  ff.,  and  elsewhere. 

*  Matt.  xi.  12  ff. ;  Luke  xvi.  16. 

6  Matt.  xvii.  24-27.  ^  Matt.  viii.  1-4. 

^  Matt.  xvii.  27. 


14  MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

To  many  other  observances  of  the  Law,  Christ 
showed,  by  His  neglect  of  them,  or  by  His 
positive  transgression,  a  high  superiority.  He 
touched  the  Leper  and  did  not  feel  Himself 
unclean ;  ^  He  reckoned  all  foods  as  lawful ;  ^ 
He  broke  av/ay  from  the  literal  observance  of 
the  Sabbath  Law.^  He  left  no  commands  about 
sacrifice,  the  temple-worship,  or  circumcision,  but 
on  the  contrary,  by  the  institution  of  the  New 
Covenant,  He  abrogated  for  ever  these  sacraments 
of  the  Old. 

Thus,  as  Professor  Denney  remarks,^  Christ 
'presents  a  positive  new  standard  of  life,  from 
which  legalism  has  disappeared,  a  standard  of 
love  exhibited  either  in  His  own  example  or  in 
that  of  His  heavenly  Father  by  which  all  men 
are  to  be  judged.  .  .  .  All  these  modes  of  con- 
ceiving the  standard  of  disciple-life,  though  not 
annulling  the  Law  but  fulfilling  it,  are  neverthe- 
less indifferent  to  it,  either  as  a  historic  document 
or  as  a  national  institution.'  ^ 

Let  us  now  pass  to  the  Apostles.  From  the 
first  the  Apostles  employed  the  Old  Testament 
in  all  their  preaching,  whether  apologetic  or 
practical.     Even   those  of   them  who  emphasise 

1  Matt.  viii.  1-4.  ^  Mark  vii.  15;  Luke  xi,  37  ;  cf.  x.  7. 

8  Matt.  xii.  1-12;  Luke  xiii.  10-17;  xiv.  1-6;  John  v.  1-17. 

*  Messrs.  Clark's  Bible  Dictionary,  art.  *  Law  in  the  New 
Testament.* 

^  On  the  whole  subject  see  especially  Robert  Mackintosh, 
Christ  and  the  Jexvish  Law.     London,  1886. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT     15 

the  exhaustion  of  the  old  dispensation  are  ready, 
like  the  author  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews, 
to  draw  from  its  Scriptures  declarations  of  the 
character  and  will  of  God,  examples  of  faith,  and 
directions  both  for  conduct  and  worship.  Paul 
affirms  that,  while  the  Gentile  has  not  been  left 
without  a  revelation  of  God,  it  has  been  the  glory 
of  the  Jew  to  possess  a  definite  and  authoritative 
expression  of  God's  will  in  the  Scriptures.  To 
the  Jew  have  been  intrusted  the  oracles  of  God;  ^ 
which  reveal  His  character,^  and  the  purposes 
of  His  Providence  both  with  regard  to  Israel  ^ 
and  other  nations,  as  well  as  His  statutes  for 
man's  daily  life.  Paul  even  includes  the  cere- 
monial Law*  within  this  divine  endowment  of 
his  people.  Moreover,  the  Scriptures  of  the 
Jews  are  prophetic,  the  history  and  the  institu- 
tions recorded  in  them  are  typical,  of  the  new 
dispensation  itself.^  In  every  way  the  Old 
Testament  is  of  significance  to  the  Church  of 
Christ.  Whatsoever  things  were  written  afore- 
time ^  were  written  for  our  learning,  that  we 
through  patience  and  comfort  of  the  Scriptures 
might  have  hope^  Now  all  these  things  hap- 
pened unto  Israel  by  way  of  figure ;  and  they 

1  Rom.  iii.  2. 

2  Rom.  iii.  4  (Ps.  li.  4) ;  Rom.  ix.  15,  17,  20  (Exod.  xxxiii.  19; 
Isa.  xlv.  9,  10) ;  Rom.  xi.  34  (Isa.  xl.  13) ;  i  Cor.  ii.  16,  etc. 

3  Rom.  iv.  3  (Gen.  xv.  6),  17  (Gen.  xvii.  5) ;  ix.-xi.,  etc. 
^  Aarpeto,  Rom.  ix.  4.  ^  I  Cor.  x.  i  ff.,  etc. 

6  Rom.  XV.  4. 


i6         MODERN   CRITICISM  AND  THE 

are  written  for  our  admonitio7iy  upo7i  whom  the 
ends  of  the  world  are  cojne} 

But  we  must  go  further  and  notice  that  these 
opinions  of  the  abiding  validity  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment were  held  by  the  Apostles  along  with  a  very 
strict  belief  in  the  inspiration  of  its  text.^  In  the 
inspiration  of  the  letter  of  the  Old  Testament 
the  Apostles  sometimes  appear  to  have  as  ex- 
plicit a  confidence  as  the  Jewish  doctors  of  their 
time.  Not  only  is  it  God's  Spirit  who,  according 
to  them,  speaks  by  the  mouths  of  prophets  and 
psalmists,  but  every  word  which  they  quote  — 
however  detached  from  its  context  and  however 
much  in  their  application  of  it  they  may  change 
its  meaning  from  that  which  it  plainly  bears  in 
the  original  —  is  in  their  belief  a  word  of  God. 

At  first  sight  this  apostolic  testimony  seems 
to  exclude  modern  criticism  from  every  right  or 
claim  to  apply  its  methods  to  the  Old  Testament. 
A  little  observation,  however,  will  show  us  that 
the  very  opposite  is  the  case;  and  that  the  treat- 
ment of  the  Old  Testament  by  the  Apostles,  so  far 
from  silencing  critical  questions,  raises  these  in  a 
somewhat  more  aggravated  form  than  the  Old 
Testament  by  itself  does.  For,  in  the  first  place, 
let  me  remind  you,  the  apostolic  writings  nowhere 
define  the  limits  of   the  Old  Testament  Canon. 

1  I  Cor.  X.  II. 

2  Compare  Reuss,  History  of  the  Canon  of  the  Holy  Scriptures, 
trans,  by  Hunter,  pp.  12  ff. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT     17 

On  the  contrary,  their  employment  of  what  the 
Church  now  regards  as  extra-canonical  writings/ 
and  their  appeal  to  questionable  traditions  as  if 
these  were  of  equal  validity  with  writings  which 
we  regard  as  canonical,  seems  to  indicate  that 
the  Apostles  fixed  no  such  hard  lines  round  the 
Scriptures  as  the  Jewish,  and  some  parts  of  the 
Christian,  Church  afterwards  fixed.  Again,  let 
us  take  a  still  more  significant  fact.  For  the 
most  part  the  writers  of  the  New  Testament, 
whether  in  the  Gospels  or  the  discourses  of  the 
Book  of  Acts  or  the  Epistles,  draw  their  Old 
Testament  citations  from  the  Greek  version  or 
*  Septuagint.'  Not  only  does  that  version  contain 
a  number  of  Books  which  the  Hebrew  Canon 
excludes ;  ^  but  in  the  Books  which  it  has  in 
common  with  the  latter  we  can  see  that  the 
Hebrew  text,  from  which  the  translation  was 
made,  sometimes  varied  substantially  from  the 
canonical  Hebrew  text ;  and  even  where  the  text 
has  been  the  same,  the  Greek  version  often  gives 
a  different  meaning  from  that  of  the  original. 
And  although  in  some  of  these  differences 
between   the  Hebrew  and  the  Greek,  the  latter 

^  I  Cor.  ii.  9 ;  Heb.  xi.  37 ;  Jude  9,  14  f.,  where  the  Book  of 
Enoch  is  directly  quoted.  For  other  New  Testament  passages 
which  it  has  influenced,  see  Encyc.  Biblica,  i.  p.  225,  §  32. 

2  Which  fact,  taken  along  with  the  Apostles'  use  of  apocry- 
phal writings  as  '  Scripture  '  or  as  true  history,  seems  to  imply 
that  the  Apostles  accepted  the  wider  Canon  of  the  Hellenist 
Jews  rather  than  the  Hebrew  one.     But  this  is  not  certain. 

B 


i8         MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

has  the  sounder  reading  and  enables  us  to  correct 
the  former,  yet  in  other  cases  it  is  clear  either 
that  the  translators'  reading  of  the  text  was 
wrong  or  that  they  were  mistaken  in  their  ren- 
dering of  it  into  Greek.  Of  these  discrepancies 
between  the  Greek  and  the  Hebrew  there  are 
instances  among  the  citations  made  from  the  Old 
Testament  by  New  Testament  writers.  Paul 
himself,  while  proving  his  acquaintance  with  the 
Hebrew  original/  quotes  from  the  Greek  even 
where  this  differs  from  the  Hebrew.  In  one  pas- 
sage the  Greek  enables  him  to  quote  some  words 
of  Hosea  in  an  opposite  sense  from  that  in  which 
the  Prophet  employed  them.^  And  in  general, 
indifference  is  shown  about  the  exact  words  of 
the  citations.  They  are  quoted  loosely,  as  if 
from  memory;  different  passages  are  mingled 
and  even  at  one  point,^  under  the  Scriptural 
formula,  as  it  is  written,  an  apocryphal  writing 
is  fused  with  one  from  the  Book  of  Isaiah. 

Nor  is  that  all,  for  when  we  pass  from  the  quota- 
tion of  the  Old  Testament  text  by  the  Apostles 
to  their  interpretation  of  it,  we  find  much  more 
that  raises  questions.  In  his  exegesis  of  the 
Old  Testament,  Paul,  upon  several  occasions, 
follows  the  allegorising  methods    of  the  Jewish 

1  E.g.  I  Cor.  XV.  54,  quoting  from  Isa.  xxv.  8  :  the  Lxx.  in 
which  passage  makes  Death  triumph.  Paul  follows  the  Hebrew 
sense,  while  adopting  a  slightly  different  reading. 

2  I  Cor.  XV.  55. 

3  I  Cor.  ii.  9. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT     19 

schools  of  his  time  ;  ^  in  one  instance  he  calls 
the  literal  meaning  of  an  Old  Testament  passage 
impossible  and  substitutes  for  it  a  metaphorical 
application  of  his  own,  although  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  the  literal  meaning  was  that  of  the 
original  author.^ 

We  have  now  before  us  the  essential  facts  in 
the  use  of  the  Old  Testament  by  Christ  and  His 
Apostles.  What  conclusions  may  we  draw  from 
them? 

The  first  is  that  of  the  abiding  value  of  the 
Old  Testament  for  the  life  and  doctrine  of  the 
Christian  Church.  That  which  was  used  by 
the  Redeemer  Himself  for  the  sustenance  of  His 
own  soul  can  never  pass  out  of  the  use  of  His 
redeemed.  That  from  which  He  proved  the 
divinity  of  His  mission,  and  the  age-long  pre- 
paration for  His  coming,  must  always  have  a 
principal  place  in  His  Church's  argument  for 
Him.  Not  less  than  His  Apostles  will  His 
Church  see  revealed  in  the  Old  Testament  the 
character  of  God ;  while  some  of  His  attributes  — 

1  2  Cor.  iii.  13  ff. ;  Gal.  iv.  22  ff. 

2  Deut.  XXV.  4  forbids  the  muzzling  of  the  ox  which  treads 
out  the  corn.  In  i  Cor.  ix.  9  Paul  denies  that  this  can  be  the 
intention  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  '  Doth  God'  he  says,  *  take  care  for 
oxen  ?  Or  doth  He  say  it  altogether  for  our  sakes  ?  '  The  latter, 
he  asserts,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  one  of  the  most  beautiful  traits 
of  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy  is  the  tenderness  with  which  it  makes 
provision  for  animals.  Professor  Findlay's  attempt  to  prove 
that  Paul  is  merely  extracting  the  moral  essence  of  the  Deutero- 
nomic  injunction,  fails  to  explain  the  very  definite  language  of  the 
verse  {Expositor's  Greek  Testament,  ii.  p.  848). 


20         MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

such  as  His  Creative  Power  and  His  Providence — 
are  there  illustrated  to  an  extent  for  which  the 
brief  space  of  the  New  Testament  leaves  no  room. 
Not  less  than  the  Apostles  will  the  Church  con- 
tinue to  find  faith  and  every  virtue  exemplified 
in  the  heroes  of  Israel. 

But  along  with  this  warrant  of  the  permanent 
religious  value  of  the  Old  Testament,  Christ  and 
His  Apostles  have  nowhere  bound  the  Church 
either  to  obedience  to  all  its  laws,  or  to  belief 
in  all  its  teaching.  On  the  contrary,  our  Lord 
Himself  has  set  us  the  example  of  a  great  Dis- 
crimination. He  came  not  only  to  do  the  Law, 
but  to  judge  the  Law,  and  while  there  are  parts 
of  it  which  He  renounced  by  simply  leaving  them 
silently  behind  Him,  there  are  other  parts  upon 
which  He  turned  with  spoken  condemnation. 
He  did  not  allegorise  or  spiritualise  them  as  has 
always  been  the  manner  of  some  of  His  followers, 
bound  to  the  letter  of  Scripture  and  seeking  to 
escape  the  consequences  of  their  bondage  by 
thus  compromising  with  the  truth  ;  but  He  strictly 
condemned  them.  And  this  Discrimination  of 
our  Lord  between  what  was  binding  in  the  Law 
and  what  was  not,  has  for  us  consequences  not 
merely  moral  but  intellectual  as  well.  For  the 
judgement,  which  both  He  and  His  Apostles  often 
emphasised,  that  in  Old  Testament  laws  and 
institutions,  ideals  and  tempers,  there  is  very 
much  which  was  rudimentary  and   therefore  of 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT     21 

transient  worth  and  obligation,  opens  up  the 
whole  question  of  the  development  of  revelation 
and  justifies  what  is  so  large  a  part  of  modern 
criticism,  —  the  effort,  namely,  to  fix  the  historical 
order  of  the  Old  Testament  writings  and  to 
define  the  stages  by  which  the  primitive  reve- 
lation of  God  to  men  was  carried  onward 
and  upward  to  its  summit  in  Christ  Himself. 
Besides,  Christ's  attitude  to  the  Law  reminds 
us  that  similar  opposition  exists  within  the 
Old  Testament  itself,  between  the  ethical  teach- 
ing of  the  Prophets  and  the  priestly  concep- 
tions of  religion.  The  determination  of  these 
two  conflicting  tendencies  in  the  development 
of  Israel's  faith  is  another  of  the  offices  of 
Criticism. 

But  the  Apostles  go  further.  Although  unable 
to  free  themselves  from  the  strict  views  of  inspira- 
tion which  the  Jewish  schools  enforced  and  which 
seem  to  preclude  all  liberty  of  criticism,  their 
practical  use  of  the  Old  Testament  only  serves 
to  suggest  how  clamant  the  need  of  criticism  is  — 
and  that  in  every  department  of  criticism  which 
the  modern  Church  has  developed.  Is  it  the 
question  of  the  Canon  .?  The  New  Testament 
writers  bequeath  that  question  to  the  Church; 
making  it  by  their  quotations  from  extra-canon- 
ical writings  a  more  difficult  one  than  it  is  with 
the  Jewish  doctors  themselves.  Is  it  the  question 
of  the  Text  ?     Their  use  of  the  Septuagint  raises 


2  2         MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

that  question  in  every  possible  detail.  Is  it  the 
question  of  the  interpretation  of  the  Text  ? 
Some  of  their  interpretations,  as  we  have  seen, 
are  a  direct  challenge  to  our  sense  of  truth  to 
discover  what  the  Old  Testament  writers  actually 
intended,  apart  from  the  meanings,  which  tem- 
porary and  often  false  fashions  of  exegesis  put 
upon  their  words. 

In  short,  the  New  Testament  treatment  of  the 
Old  not  only  bequeaths  to  the  Church  the  liberty 
of  Criticism,  but  along  many  lines  the  need  and 
obligation  of  Criticism :  not  only  delivers  us 
once  for  all  from  bondage  to  the  doctrine  of 
the  literal  inspiration  and  equal  divinity  of  all 
parts  of  the  Old  Testament,  but  prompts  every 
line  of  research  and  discussion  along  which  the 
modern  criticism  of  the  Old  Testament  has  been 
conducted.  The  task,  therefore,  of  the  following 
Lectures  is  a  double  one  :  to  inquire,  first,  whether 
this  criticism  has  been  true  to  the  liberty  which 
the  New  Testament  sanctions,  and  serviceable  in 
solving  the  problems  which  the  New  Testament 
raises ;  and  second,  whether,  in  this  loyalty  and 
in  this  service,  modern  criticism  has  conserved  or 
has  imperilled  that  permanent  religious  value  of 
the  Old  Testament  which  Christ  and  His  Apostles 
so  fully  enforced.  In  other  words,  we  have  to 
examine  how  far  the  freedom  and  thoroughness 
of  Criticism  during  this  century  have  affected  our 
belief  in  the  Old  Testament  as  the  revelation  of 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    23 

God,   the    prophecy   of    Jesus    Christ,   and    the 
example  and  proof  of  faith. 


Before  we  begin  this  inquiry  some  preliminary 
recollections  are  necessary.  The  Christian 
Church  has  twice  over  forgotten  the  liberty 
wherewith  Christ  has  made  her  free ;  and  in  two 
directions  has  attempted  to  enforce  the  literal 
acceptance  of  the  Old  Testament,  with  results, 
in  both  cases,  disastrous  to  the  interests  of  re- 
ligion. 

We  are  all  aware  that  at  various  periods  in 
the  history  of  Christendom  a  spirit  arose  amongst 
its  leaders  not  very  different  from  that  which 
moved  so  large  a  party  in  the  primitive  Church, 
and  even  some  of  the  Apostles  themselves,  to 
insist  upon  the  letter  of  the  Law  of  Moses  as 
binding  upon  all  Christians.  In  later  ages  the 
representatives  of  this  spirit  did  not  propose, 
as  those  Jewish  Christians  did,  to  enforce  circum- 
cision, sacrifice  and  other  items  of  the  Mosaic 
ritual ;  but  in  the  same  temper  of  literal  obedience 
to  the  Old  Testament  they  effected  what  was 
even  worse.  They  revived  many  of  the  rigours 
of  the  Law,  and  quoted  the  most  cruel  tempers 
of  the  old  dispensation,  as  the  sanction  of  their 
own  bigotries  and  persecutions.  No  branch  of 
the  Church  has  been  innocent  of  this  disloyalty 
to  her  Lord.     If  the  tyrants  and  inquisitors  of 


24         MODERN   CRITICISM   AND    THE 

the  Roman  Church,  in  the  days  of  its  imperial 
power,  have  claimed  the  relentlessness  of  the  old 
law  as  authority  for  their  unspeakable  cruelties 
to  those  whom  they  deemed  heretics,  our  own 
Puritan  fathers,  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic, 
have  not  hesitated  to  defend  their  intolerance  of 
opinions  which  differed  from  their  own,  their 
purchase  and  holding  of  slaves,  their  harshness 
to  criminals,  and  their  torture  and  murder  of 
witches  by  an  appeal  to  the  laws  and  customs  of 
Israel.  One  is  not  sure  whether  the  evil  is  even 
yet  dead.  A  mitigated  but  very  pregnant  expres- 
sion of  it  has  just  been  uncovered  in  a  letter  by 
John  Henry  Newman  of  date  1875.  Speaking  of 
the  cruelties  of  the  Inquisition  he  says  : 

^As  to  Dr.  Ward  in  the  Dublin  Review,  his  point 
(I  think)  was  not  the  question  of  cruelty,  but  whether 
persecutionj  such  as  in  Spain,  was  unjust ;  and  with 
the  capital  punishment  prescribed  in  the  Mosaic  Law 
for  idolatry,  blasphemy,  and  witchcraft  and  St.  Paul's 
transferring  of  the  sword  to  Christian  magistrates,  it 
seems  difficult  to  call  persecution  (so-called)  u?ijust. 
I  suppose  in  like  manner  he  would  not  deny,  but 
condemn  the  craft  and  cruelty  and  the  wholesale 
character  of  St.  Bartholomew's  massacre  ;  but  still  would 
argue  in  the  abstract  in  defence  of  the  magistrate's 
bearing  of  the  sword  and  of  the  Church's  sanctioning 
of  its  use  in  the  aspect  of  justice,  as  Moses,  Joshua, 
and  Samuel  might  use  it  against  heretics,  rebels,  and 
cruel  and  crafty  enemies.'  ^ 


1  Contemporary  Review,   Sept.   1899,  p.  362  :  A  letter  from 
John  Henry  Newman  to  J.  R.  Mozley,  of  date  April  4,  1875. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT     25 

The  spirit,  then,  lives,  though  the  flesh  be 
weak!  Taking  this  remarkable  document  along 
with  the  utterances  of  Protestant  divines  of  forty 
years  ago  in  the  Southern  States  in  defence  of 
slavery,  we  may  partly  understand  why  —  not  the 
Old  Testament,  as  Professor  Goldwin  Smith  has 
ignorantly  judged  but  —  the  literal  enforcement 
of  the  Old  Testament,  in  disloyalty  to  Christ, 
should  be  called  '  a  millstone  about  the  neck  of 
Christianity.'  From  the  first  generation  of  the 
Church  to  the  last  but  one,  the  theory  of  the 
equal  and  lasting  divinity  of  the  Jewish  Scriptures 
has  been  fertile  in  casuistry,  bigotry  and  cruel 
oppression  of  every  kind. 

But  while  all  that  is  now  mainly  a  matter  of 
historical  interest,  we  have  suffered  in  our  own 
generation,  and  to  a  high  degree  still  suffer,  from 
the  enforcement  of  the  same  spirit,  operating 
in  another  direction.  The  advocates  and  agents 
of  Biblical  Criticism  have  often  been  charged 
with  the  creation  of  sceptics,  and  we  may 
fully  admit  that  where  criticism  has  been  con- 
ducted in  a  purely  empirical  spirit  and  with- 
out loyalty  to  Christ,  it  has  shaken  the  belief 
of  some  in  the  fundamentals  of  religion,  dis- 
tracted others  from  the  zealous  service  of  God, 
and  benumbed  the  preaching  of  Christ's  gospel. 
Yet  any  one  who  has  had  practical  dealings 
with  the  doubt  and  religious  bewilderment  of 
his    day  can    testify  that   those  who   have   been 


26  MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

led  into  unbelief  by  modern  criticism  are  not 
for  one  moment  to  be  compared  in  number 
with  those  who  have  fallen  from  faith  over  the 
edge  of  the  opposite  extreme.  The  dogma  of 
a  verbal  inspiration,  the  dogma  of  the  equal 
divinity  of  all  parts  of  Scripture,  the  refusal  to 
see  any  development  either  from  the  ethnic 
religions  to  the  religion  of  Israel,  or  any  develop- 
ment within  the  religion  of  Israel  itself  —  all  these 
have  had  a  disastrous  influence  upon  the  religious 
thought  and  action  of  our  time.  They  have  not 
only  produced  confusion  in  some  of  the  hoHest 
minds  among  us.  They  have  not  only  paralysed 
the  intellects  of  those  who  have  adopted  them, 
as  every  mechanical  conception  of  the  truth  must 
(Jo.  But  they  have  been  the  provocation  to 
immense  numbers  of  honest  hearts  to  cast  off  re- 
ligion altogether.  Men  have  been  trained  in  the 
belief  that  the  holiest  elements  of  our  creed,  nay 
the  assurance  of  the  existence  and  love  of  God 
Himself,  are  bound  up  with  the  literal  acceptance 
of  the  whole  Bible,  of  which  the  Old  Testament 
forms  by  much  the  greater  part ;  so  that  when- 
ever their  minds  awoke  to  the  irreconcileable 
discrepancies  of  the  Old  Testament  text,  or  their 
consciences  to  the  narrow  and  violent  temper 
of  its  customs,  and  they  could  no  longer  believe 
in  it,  as  the  equal  and  consistent  message  of  God 
to  men,  their  whole  faith  in  Him,  suspended 
from    their  earliest  years   upon   this   impossible 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT     27 

view  of  it,  was  in  danger  of  failing  them,  and 
in  innumerable  cases  did  fail  them  for  the  rest 
of  their  lives. 

Like  every  man  who  has  read  a  little  and 
thought  a  little,  I  was  aware  of  this  great  and 
tragic  commonplace  of  our  day.  But  during  the 
last  year  I  have  come  across  so  many  instances 
of  it  —  each  the  story  of  a  human  soul  —  that  it 
has  become  vivid  and  burning  in  my  mind.  It 
has  been  my  privilege  to  go  carefully  through 
the  correspondence  of  one,  who  probably  more 
than  any  of  our  contemporaries,  was  consulted 
by  persons  of  the  religious  experience  which  I 
have  described.  Many  address  him  from  the 
silence  and  loneliness  of  those  far  margins 
of  our  world  where  men  have  not  yet  largely 
settled,  and  the  few  who  come  have  leisure 
and  detachment  enough  to  think  freshly  upon 
the  old  ways  in  which  they  have  been  trained  ; 
but  others  are  residents  of  the  centres  of 
civilisation,  and  their  words  are'  heavy  with 
what  I  feel  to  be  the  greatest  pathos  of  our 
life  —  the  hunger  of  souls  starving  unconsciously 
within  reach  of  the  food  they  need.  One  and 
all  tell  how  the  Uteral  acceptance  of  the  Bible 
—  the  faith  which  finds  in  it  nothing  erroneous, 
nothing  defective,  and  (outside  of  the  sacrifices 
and  Temple)  nothing  temporary  —  is  what  has 
driven  them  from  religion.  Henry  Drummond 
was   not   a    Biblical    scholar ;    he    was   not   an 


28         MODERN   CRITICISM   AND  THE 

authority  on  the  Old  Testament.  But  the  large 
trust  which  his  personality  and  his  writings  so 
magically  produced,  moved  men  and  women  to 
address  to  him  all  kinds  of  questions.  It  is 
astonishing  how  many  of  these  had  to  do  with 
the  Old  Testament  :  with  its  discrepancies,  its 
rigorous  laws,  its  pitiless  tempers,  its  open  treat- 
ment of  sexual  questions,  the  atrocities  which  are 
narrated  by  its  histories  and  sanctioned  by  its 
laws.  Unable  upon  the  lines  of  the  teaching  of 
their  youth  to  reconcile  these  with  a  belief  in 
the  goodness  of  God,  the  writers  had  abandoned, 
or  were  about  to  abandon,  the  latter  ;  yet  they 
eagerly  sought  an  explanation  which  would  save 
them  from  such  a  disaster. 

I  know  no  sadder  tragedy  than  this  innumer- 
ably repeated  one,  nor  any  service  which  it  v^ere 
better  worth  doing  than  the  attempt  to  help 
men  out  of  its  perplexities.  I  firmly  believe 
that  such  an  attempt  must  lie  along  the  lines 
indicated  by  Christ  and  His  Apostles,  and 
followed  by  the  textual  and  historical  criticism 
which  takes  its  charter  from  Christ  Himself. 
And  if  I  am  right,  then  we  shall  find  in  the 
task  on  which  we  have  entered  with  this  lecture, 
interests  and  responsibilities  which  are  not  merely 
scholastic  or  historical,  but  thoroughly  evangelical 
—  concerned  with  faith,  and  the  assistance  of  souls 
in  darkness,  and  the  equipment  of  the  Church  of 
Christ  for  her  ministry  of  God's  Word. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    29 


LECTURE   II 

THE  COURSE  AND   CHARACTER   OF  MODERN 
CRITICISM 

We  have  seen  that  the  treatment  of  the  Old 
Testament  by  the  New  leaves  us  with  a  double 
result.  In  the  first  place,  our  Lord  and  His 
Apostles  use  the  Hebrew  Scriptures,  and  commit 
them  to  us  as  the  living  Word  of  God:  the 
Revelation  of  His  Nature  and  Providence,  in- 
cluding in  the  latter  His  choice  of  Israel  to  be 
His  '  Servant '  to  the  world.  His  preparation  for 
the  advent  of  Christ,  and  His  purposes  of  grace 
to  all  mankind.  But  in  the  second  place,  our 
Lord  makes  a  great  discrimination  in  His  judge- 
ment of  the  Law  and  its  ethical  tempers,  and 
teaches  us  to  read  the  Old  Testament  as  the 
record  of  a  progressive  revelation ;  while  the 
Apostles  bequeath  to  the  Church  unsolved  all 
other  problems  of  criticism,  whether  textual  or 
historical.  We  must  clearly  recognise  that  our 
Lord  did  not  count  the  whole  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment as  equally  Divine;  that  He  set  us  an 
example  of  liberty   in  judging   the  facts  which 


30         MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

it  presents  to  us;  and  that  the  Criticism  with 
which  we  have  to  deal  —  whether  it  be  the  Lower 
Criticism  or  the  Higher  —  is  not  the  product  of 
the  modern  mind,  looking  at  the  Old  Testament 
alone,  but  that  some  of  the  problems  arise  in 
Christ's  own  treatment  of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures, 
and  that  others  leave  the  hands  of  His  Apostles 
in  an  even  more  acute  form  than  that  in  which 
they  issue  from  the  Old  Testament  itself. 

Starting,  then,  from  these  our  chief  authorities, 
the  task  of  the  following  lectures  is  a  double 
one.  We  have  to  inquire :  first,  how  far  Modern 
Criticism,  in  the  use  of  the  liberty  which  Christ 
exemplified,  has  succeeded  in  solving  the  pro- 
blems bequeathed  to  the  Church ;  and  second^ 
whether  in  solving  them  Modern  Criticism  tends 
to  impair  or  to  fortify  our  belief  that  the  Old 
Testament  contains  a  real  revelation  of  God. 
For  us  preachers  the  latter  is  the  cardinal 
question ;  but  the  former  is  preliminary  and  in- 
dispensable to  it.  In  this  lecture  I  propose  to 
give  an  account  of  the  general  course  of  Biblical 
Criticism  during  the  last  century.  The  best  way 
of  doing  this  will  be  by  the  examination  of 
certain  charges  which  have  recently  been  made 
against  the  general  methods  of  Criticism.  In 
discussing  these,  I  fear  that  I  must  describe  a 
number  of  things  which  have  been  often  de- 
scribed, and  are  well  known  to  many  of  you ; 
but  the  ignorance  of  them,  which  is  still  shown 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    31 

in  some  quarters,  makes  their  repetition,  however 
trite,  an  inevitable  duty. 

The  charges  made  against  modern  criticism 
may  be  summed  up  under  three  heads. 

First,  that  the  modern  criticism  of  the  Old 
Testament  is  a  movement  of  recent  growth,  and 
that  its  results  are,  therefore,  precarious. 

Second,  that  Old  Testament  criticism  proceeds 
only  on  linguistic  and  literary  evidence,  which, 
being  estimated  by  modern  tastes  and  standards, 
must  be  largely  subjective  and  uncertain. 

Third,  that  critics  ignore  the  evidence  of 
archaeology,  geography  and  the  allied  sciences  ; 
and  that  this  is  hostile  to  their  conclusions. 


I.    The  General  Course  of  Modern  Criticism. 

Many  of  the  opponents  of  Old  Testament 
criticism  have  represented  the  movement  as  if 
it  were  but  the  growth  of  yesterday,  with  results 
so  hastily,  and  arbitrarily  reached  that  they  are 
certain  to  be  reversed  by  the  discoveries  and 
debates  of  to-morrow  —  like  Jonah's  gourd,  the 
son  of  a  night,  in  a  night  they  shall  perish  !  If 
this  were  so  we  might  at  once  abandon  the  task 
we  have  set  ourselves.  It  would  not  be  worth 
our  attention  to  examine  the  effect  of  a  move- 
ment so  sudden  and  precarious  upon  the  Church's 
age-long  attitude  to  the  greater  part  of  her  sacred 
writings.      But   the   science   of   Old   Testament 


32         MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

criticism   is  not   the   thing   of  yesterday  which 
its  assailants  pretend.     Even  within  its  modern 
development— which  is  all  we  have  got  to  do 
with  just  now  —  it  covers  a  period  of  more  than 
two   hundred  years.     It  has  achieved  a  career, 
that  is  to  say,  as  long  as  those  of  many  of  the 
historical   and    physical    sciences.      Nor,   within 
the  last  century  at  least,  has  it  been  served  by  a 
less  constant  succession  of  able  experts;   while 
its  methods  have  been  equally  without  dogmatic 
bias,  and  so  far  as  their  materials  go,  as  trust- 
worthy and    exact.     Consequently    the   progress 
of  the  science  has  resembled  that  of  every  other 
intellectual   movement   of   our   time   which    has 
issued  in  generally  accepted  results.     It  has  been 
slow,  gradual   and    severely   contested.      It   has 
suffered   from    digressions,    pedantries,   extrava- 
gancies.    It   has   been  forced  to  abandon  some 
positions  which  it  had  previously  occupied  with 
confidence:    and    upon    innumerable    details    it 
still  exhibits  among  its  supporters  difference  of 
opinion.     But  with  few  or  no  preconceptions,  it 
has  started  from  facts  easily  ascertained  within 
the  sacred  text  itself ;   each  step  forward  which  it 
has  taken  has  been  planted  on  other  facts  in  the 
same  field   or  upon  reasonable    inferences  from 
these.     It  has  suffered  from,  and   has  benefited 
by,  the  personal  jealousies  and  ambitions  of  its 
agents,  who  have  left  few  fresh  proposals  or  dis- 
coveries undisputed :  and  it  has  issued  in  a  large 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    ss 

and  increasing  agreement  upon  certain  main  lines 
of  conclusion. 

Let  us  look  for  a  little  at  the  details.^  The 
modern  criticism  of  the  Old  Testament  may  be 
said  to  have  begun  in  1680.  In  that  year  a 
French  priest  called  Simon  drew  attention  to 
the  fact  that  within  the  Book  of  Genesis  the 
same  event  is  often  described  in  different  words. 
He  emphasised  especially  the  two  accounts  of 
the  Creation,  which  lie  side  by  side  in  the 
opening  chapters,  and  the  two  accounts  of  the 
Flood  which  are  fused  together  in  chapters  vi-ix. 
For  these  Simon  suggested  different  authors, 
whose  writings  Moses  had  put  together.  Such 
was  the  beginning  of  the  criticism  of  the  Pen- 
tateuch. You  will  observe  not  only  how  simple 
it  is  and  how  easily  verified,  but  that  also,  so  far 
from  its  motive  being  a  prejudice  against  the 
Mosaic  authorship  of  the  first  Book  of  the  Bible, 
it  took  this  for  granted.  Notice  particularly 
that  it  starts  from  t/ie  fact  of  two  accounts  of 
the  same  events.  It  is  on  the  presence  of  many 
such  '  doublets  '  in  the  Hexateuch  and  historical 
books  that  the  modern  criticism  of  the  Old 
Testament  is  based. 

Seventy  years  after  Simon  another  Frenchman, 

1  The  English  reader  will  find  full  accounts  of  these  in  Cheyne's 
Foimdersof  Old  Testai7ieiit  Criticism,  or  in  a  more  summary  form 
so  far  as  Hexateuchal  criticism  is  concerned  in  the  introductions 
to  Addis's  Docu77iettts  of  the  Hexateuch :  Nutt,  London,  vol.  i. 
1892,  vol.  ii.  1898. 

C 


34         MODERN   CRITICISM   AND  THE 

Astruc,  published  his  Conjectures  on  the  Original 
Memoirs  of  zvJiich  it  appears  Moses  made  use  in 
composing  the  Book  of  Gejiesis}  That  is  the  full 
title  of  his  work,  and  it  also  proves  ■  how  in- 
dependent was  the  literary  criticism  of  Genesis 
of  any  desire  to  deny  the  Mosaic,  or  ancient 
origin  of  the  Book.  After  dividing  the  two 
narratives  of  the  Creation  as  Simon  had  done, 
Astruc  pointed  out  that  each  of  them  had  a 
distinguishing  mark.  The  first,  Genesis  i.-ii.  ^a 
always  speaks  of  the  Creator  as  Elohim,  the 
Hebrev/  term  for  God;  the  second.  Genesis  ii. 
^b-iii.  calls  Him  Jahweh  or  Jahweh-Elohim,  the 
name  of  Israel's  national  deity.  Again  we 
have  a  simple  fact  which  any  reader  can  test  for 
himself. 

Had  this  difference  between  the  Divine  Names 
stood  by  itself,  its  discovery  would  have  led  to 
nothing  but  confusion ;  because  the  texts  have 
often  been  copied,  and,  as  any  one  may  see 
from  a  comparison  of  the  most  ancient  versions 
with  the  Hebrew,  the  copying  scribes  sometimes 
substituted  the  one  Divine  Name  for  the  other. 
Besides,  there  were  occasions  in  the  course  of 
the  narrative,  which  usually  employs  the  national 
name  Jahweh,  to  substitute  for  this  the  more 
general  title  Elohim,  as  for  instance  when  the 
writer  is  treating  of  the  essential  character  of 
God  or  is  introducing  the  statements  of  persons 

1  Brussels,  1753  :  x.  and  525  pages  i2mo. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT     35 

who  were  not  Israelites  and  who  did  not  know 
God  as  Jahweh.     The  distinction,  therefore,  be- 
tween the    Divine   Names   is   too    precarious  to 
determine    a    distinction     of    authorship.      But 
shortly  before  1780  Eichhorn,  a  German  Hebraist, 
who  had  arrived  independently  at  Astruc's  con- 
clusion, confirmed  and   corrected   its  results   by 
another  discovery.    He  showed  that  the  difference 
in  the  name  of  the  Deity  was  accompanied  by 
several  other  linguistic  variations.     The  passages 
which  use  Elohim  speak  of  Him  as  creating  the 
world,  and  talk  of  the  beasts  of  the  earth ;  the 
passages  which  usually  employ  the  name  Jahweh 
speak  of  Him  as  making  or  forming  the  world, 
and  talk  of  the  beasts  of  the  field.     These  are  but 
two  instances  out  of  many  :  Eichhorn  had  struck 
a  line  of  differences  too  numerous  and  too  dis- 
tinctive to  prove  fallacious.     This,  however,  was 
not  final  :  a  few  years  later,  in   1798,  Ilgen,  an- 
other German,  observed  that  within  those  parts 
of  Genesis  in  which  Elohim  was  used  there  are 
also  double  accounts  of  the  same  event,  which  can 
be  distinguished  from  each  other  by  differences 
of  style  and  vocabulary.    Ilgen  is  therefore  called 
the  discoverer  of  the  Second  Elohist. 

Now  it  was  natural  that  since  the  main  dis- 
tinction among  these  documents  lay  in  the  name 
of  the  Deity  used  by  each,  that  distinction  should 
not  at  first  have  been  explored  beyond  the  sixth 
chapter  of  Exodus  where   God  reveals   Himself 


36         MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

under  the  name  Jahweh,  for  up  to  this  point  there 
is  an  obvious  reason  why  the  Elohist  documents 
should  refrain  from  using  the  name  Jahweh.  But 
another  and  independent  line  of  criticism  had 
already  been  started  which  was  carrying  the  dis- 
crimination of  the  documents  farther  on.  One 
of  the  representatives  of  this  —  perhaps  the 
originator — was  a  Roman  Catholic  priest,  a 
Scotsman,  called  Geddes.^  That  remarkable 
man  did  not  work  on  the  lines  laid  down  by 
the  critics  I  have  mentioned.  Where  they, 
struck  by  the  different  names  for  Deity,  dis- 
tinguished two  or  three  documents,  Geddes, 
confused  by  the  presence  of  a  large  variety  of 
differences  and  discrepancies,  which  he  did  not 
stop  to  classify,  rushed  to  the  conclusion  that 
these  were  proofs  of  a  great  number  of  in- 
dependent sources.  This  Fragmentary  Hy- 
pothesis, as  it  was  called,  was  taken  up  in 
Germany  by  Vater.  So  far  as  it  affirmed  the 
presence  of  many  documents  it  did  not  at  the 
time  contribute  to  the  progress  of  criticism  in 
that  direction,^  but  because  the  boldness  of  its 
authors  did  not  confine  it  to  Genesis  and  the 
first  six  chapters  of  Exodus  it  opened  the  way 

1  See  his  Life^  etc.,  by  John  Mason  Good  ;  London,  1863.  His 
O.  T.  work  is  entitled  The  Holy  Bible  .  .  .  faithfully  translated 
from  corrected  texts  of  the  origiiials,  with  various  Readings,  Notes, 
and  Critical  Remarks  ;  two  vols.,  London,  1792-97.  Critical  Re- 
marks on  the  Hebrew  Scriptures :  vol.  i.,  Pentateuch,  1800. 

2  Yet  the  justness  of  much  of  the  reasoning  connected  with  this 
hypothesis  has  been  proved  by  more  recent  scholars ;  see  below. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT     37 

to  the  analysis  of  the  rest  of  the  Pentateuch  and 
even  of  Joshua.^ 

From  1805  onwards  De  Wette  demonstrated 
the  singularity  of  Deuteronomy  both  as  regards 
its  doctrine  and  its  style;  a  singularity  so  con- 
spicuous even  to  the  tyro  in  Hebrew  that  the 
absence  of  an  earlier  discovery  of  it  now  seems 
astonishing.  Not  only  the  favourite  phrases  and 
formulas,  the  favourite  interests  and  ideals,  of 
this  Book,  but  its  treatment  of  the  same  events, 
and  its  laws  for  the  same  matters  are  so  different 
from  those  of  preceding  parts  of  the  Pentateuch,2 
as  to  prove  beyond  all  doubt  difference  of  author- 
ship and  date.  Here,  then,  is  a  fourth  document. 
Next,  Bleek,  who  had  been  partly  anticipated  by 
Geddes,  proved  that  the  Book  of  Joshua  forms 
an  indispensable  supplement  to  the  Pentateuch 
by  carrying  on  the  history  and  enforcing  the 
legislation  of  the  latter  —  not  on  one  line  but  to 
different  degrees  on  all  the  lines,  sometimes  con- 
flicting, of  the  four  documents.  Then  from  the 
beginning  of  Genesis  to  the  end  of  Joshua  the 
attempt  was  made  to  disentangle  these  docu- 
ments by  Ewald.  And  ultimately  —  to  pass  over 
several  intermediate  confirmations  of   the   main 

1  For  Geddes's  share  in  extending  the  process  to  Joshua, 
see  article  'Joshua'  by  the  present  writer  in  Hastings's  Bible 
Dictionary.^ 

2  For  details  I  must  refer  the  reader  to  the  introduction  to 
Driver's  Commentary;  Moore's  article  in  the  Encyclopedia  Bib- 
lica  ;  and  Ryle's  in  Hastings's  Bible  Dictionary. 


^S         MODERN   CRITICISM    AND   THE 

lines  of  analysis  —  Hupfeld  ^  arrived  independently 
at  Ilgen's  conclusions  about  the  two  Elohists, 
and  established  them  upon  a  sounder  basis.  He 
took,  for  instance,  the  well-known  double  accounts 
of  the  origin  of  the  names  Bethel  and  Israel. 
One  of  these  (Gen.  xxxv.  9-15)  relates  that 
Elohim  appeared  to  Jacob  as  he  came  out  of 
Padan-aram,  and  that,  therefore,  Jacob  called  the 
name  of  the  place  Beth-el  or  /iouse  of  God;  but 
the  other  (Gen.  xxviii.  10-22)  relates  that  God 
appeared  to  Jacob  at  the  same  place  on  his 
departure  for  Padan-aram,  and  that  it  was  at 
this  earlier  time  that  the  place  was  named 
Bethel :  in  conformity  with  which  God,  when  He 
appears  to  Jacob  in  Padan-aram,  calls  Himself 
the  God  of  Bethel  (Gen.  xxxi.  13).  Again,  ac- 
cording to  Genesis  xxxii.  23-33,  the  name  Israel 
was  first  given  to  Jacob  when  he  wrestled  with 
the  Unknown  on  the  banks  of  Jabbok;  and  it 
was  then  said  :  thou  sJialt  no  more  be  called  Jacob?' 
But  in  Genesis  xxxv.  9-15  the  origin  of  the  name 
Israel  is  dated  at  Bethel  on  Jacob's  return  from 
Padan-aram.  These  are  only  two  of  several 
variations,  not  only  of  style  but  of  substance, 
which  prove  the  presence  in  the  story  of  Jacob 

1  In   The  Sources  of  Genesis  {Die  Quelle ii  d.  Genesis) ^  1S50, 

2  It  is  not  quite  certain  whether  this  narrative  is  from  the 
Elohist  or  the  Jahwist.  The  divine  name  is  Elohim,  but  there 
are  other  parts  in  the  style  which  lead  many  to  attribute  it  to  the 
Jahwist.  See  below  on  the  acknowledged  impossibility  of  always 
discriminating  between  the  Jahwist  and  Elohist. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    39 

of  two  documents  both  using  the  name  Elohim. 
Hupfeld  made  an  even  more  important  observa- 
tion. He  remarked  that  these  two  Elohist  docu- 
ments are  not  so  closely  related  to  each  other  as 
one  of  them  is  to  the  Jahwist.  This  one,  which 
he  calls  the  Second  Elohist,  differs  from  the 
Jahwist  generally  only  in  details  —  though  also  in 
certain  conceptions  of  the  Deity  —  and  is  so  inter- 
woven with  the  latter  that  the  two  are  often 
indistinguishable  and  were  evidently  combined 
before  being  attached  either  to  the  First  Elohist 
or  to  the  Deuteronomic  writer.  The  First 
Elohist,  on  the  other  hand,  has  a  character  all 
its  own.  Of  the  bulk  of  the  Hexateuch  it  supplies 
by  far  the  greater  part ;  of  the  plan  which  runs 
through  the  Hexateuch^  it  is  the  upholding 
frame.  Hence  it  has  been  called  the  Grundschrift 
or  Basal  Document ;  but  because  it  contains  the 
larger  part  of  the  legislation,  and  that  part  is 
distinguished  from  the  rest  by  an  elaboration  of 
laws  concerning  the  priesthood  and  ritual,  it  is 
now  more  usually  called  the  Priestly,  while  the 
name  Elohist  is  reserved  for  Hupfeld's  Second 
Elohist. 

Before  the  middle  of  the  century,  then,  the 
main  lines  of  the  analysis  of  the  Hexateuch  were 
laid  down,  and  all  the  effect  of  subsequent  criti- 
cism has  been  to  confirm  and  develop  them. 
The  evidence  that  there  are  four  main  documents 

1  This  is  more  true  of  Genesis  to  Deuteronomy  than  of  Joshua. 


40         MODERN   CRITICISM  AND   THE 

has  been  revised  and  the  conclusion  corroborated 
by  a  large  number  of  independent  scholars  in 
several  countries  and  schools  of  Christendom. 
Kuenen  and  others  in  Holland ;  Graf,  Well- 
hausen,  Noldeke,  Dillmann,  Kautzsch,  Stade, 
Budde,  Holzinger  and  others  in  Germany ;  West- 
phal  and  others  in  France;  Robertson  Smith, 
Cheyne,  Driver,  Addis,  Bennett,  Ball,  Ryle,  Esthn 
Carpenter  and  Harford-Battersby  in  Great  Britain  ; 
Briggs  and  Bacon  in  America,  have  all  made 
detailed  analyses  of  the  whole  or  of  parts  of  the 
Hexateuch;  and  their  conclusions  have  been 
adopted,  or  independently  verified,  by  others  who 
have  not  published  detailed  analyses  but  have 
studied  and  written  on  the  subjects  contained  in 
the  Hexateuch:  as  for  instance  a  large  band  of 
contributors  to  Hastings's  Bible  Dictionary  ^  and 
to  the  EncyclopcBdia  Biblica.  It  cannot  be  of 
chance  nor  by  arbitrariness  that  among  so  large 
a  majority  of  experts,  working  independently 
of  each  other,  and  in  face  of  continual  criticism 
from  scholars  on  the  other  side,  there  should 
result  an  agreement  of  opinion  so  strong,  so 
surely  growing,  and  so  widely  based  on  the 
phenomena  of  the  sacred  text  itself.  Every 
position  asserted  has  in  turn  been  contested : 
in  every  case  the  evidence  has  been  several 
times  analysed ;  and  one  by  one  conservative 
scholars  like  Delitzsch,  who  had  at  first  resisted 

^  See  especially  the  article  '  Hexateuch '  by  F.  H.  Woods. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT     41 

the  conclusions,  have  in  the  end  expressed  their 
adherence  to  them.  From  the  nature  of  the 
materials  much  uncertainty,  of  course,  must  pre- 
vail. Purely  philological  evidence,  where  it  alone 
is  available,  is  often  ambiguous :  but  as  we  shall 
see  in  the  next  section  of  this  Lecture,  the  philo- 
logical is  only  one  department  of  the  evidence. 
Difference  of  style  or  of  language  is  in  most 
cases  accompanied  by  difference  of  substance, 
and  the  judgements  which  arise  on  the  latter 
cannot  be  due  to  modern  literary  tastes  or 
standards. 

We  have  seen  ^  that  the  theory  of  the  composi- 
tion of  the  Hexateuch  from  four  documents  had 
one  rival,  the  theory  of  composition  from  many 
fragments.  There  was  also  another  theory,  that 
of  expansion;  or  the  enlargement  of  a  small 
kernel  of  tradition  by  successive  additions  and 
revisions  from  later  stages  of  the  national  memory 
and  religious  development.  Both  of  these  theories 
have  received  some  justification  from  the  more 
recent  elaboration  of  the  documentary  theory. 
For  within  each  of  the  four  documents  further 
examination  has  discovered  certain  smaller  varia- 
tions of  language,  but  still  more  of  substance, 
which  make  it  probable  that  the  documents  con- 
tain later  additions  in  the  style  characteristic  of 
each,  and  that  thus  they  represent  not  the  work 
of  the  same  author  so  much  as  that  of  the  same 

1  Above,  p.  36. 


42         MODERN   CRITICISM  AND   THE 

school  of  tradition  and  religious  conception.^ 
Then,  as  there  are  four  documents,  and  as  it  is 
evident  that  two  of  them,  the  Jahwist  and  Elohist, 
were  combined  before  the  others  were  added,  this 
implies  more  than  one  editor,  whose  additions 
and  modifications  are  to  be  expected  and,  where 
possible,  distinguished.  Of  the  presence  of  such 
minor  distinctions,  the  present  state  of  the  text 
affords  many  clear  signs ;  and  that  the  process 
of  revising  and  adding  continued  a  very  long 
time  is  proved  by  a  comparison  of  the  Hebrew 
with  the  oldest  versions  into  other  languages. 
Here  the  work  of  the  critic  is  necessarily  ex- 
tremely delicate,  and    the  results  are  often  un- 

1  To  go  into  the  details  of  this  more  delicate  and  therefore  pre- 
carious criticism  of  recent  years  is  impossible  in  the  limits  of  a 
single  lecture.  But  some  particulars  may  be  given  in  a  note.  For 
fuller  details  the  English  reader  may  be  referred  to  the  article 
'  Hexateuch  '  in  Hastings's  Bible  Dictionary;  and,  so  far  as  Deuter- 
onomy is  concerned,  to  Driver's  introduction  to  his  CoTUJ/ientary 
and  to  the  forthcoming  edition  by  the  present  writer  of  the  text  and 
translation  of  that  book  in  Haupt's  Sacred  Books  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment.  In  the  Jahwist  document  the  stories  of  early  humanity  and 
the  growth  of  civilisation  contain  some  discrepancies  which  betray 
different  sources. — In  Deuteronomy  there  has  long  been  a  division 
of  opinion  as  to  how  much,  if  any,  of  the  prefatory  introductions, 
i-ii,  belong  to  the  same  author  as  that  of  the  legal  codes  ;  and 
within  the  latter  parallel  and  slightly  differing  laws  are  found  on 
the  same  subject.  In  the  year  1894  the  analysis  of  Deuteronomy 
took  a  new  direction  on  the  publication  of  Stark's  and  Steuerna- 
gel's  investigations  into  the  use  of  the  singular  and  plural  forms  of 
address  in  that  Book.  In  some  passages  Israel  is  addressed  as 
thou,  in  some  as  you.  The  data  are  extremely  puzzling  because 
the  text  is  often  uncertain  where  those  pronouns  occur,  and  be- 
cause the  Hebrew  idiom  permits  the  same  writer  or  speaker  to  pass 
from  the  one  to  the  other.     But  where  the  change  coincides  with 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    43 

certain.  But  the  uncertainties  do  not  involve 
more  than  the  fringes  of  the  four  main  documents 
and  their  principal  constituents.  Upon  these,  by 
facts  which  are  obvious  to  every  student,  by 
methods  that  are  thorough  and  exact,  through 
much  debate  and  jealous  revision,  there  has 
gradually  been  produced  among  critics  a  most 
remarkable  unanimity. 

So  much  for  the  analysis  of  the  first  six  Books 
of  the  Old  Testament.  The  Historical  Books 
stand  next  in  order.  Some  of  them,  for  example 
the  Books  of  Kings,  explicitly  assert  that  they 
have  been  composed  from  several  sources ;  all  of 
them  present  on  the  surface  the  same  features  as 

other  changes  m  the  style  or  religious  conception,  there  is  mani- 
festly a  strong  reason  for  supposing  a  difference  of  author.  Not 
only  is  such  coincidence  frequent  in  Deuteronomy  both  in  the 
hortatory  sections  and  the  laws,  but  while  both  the  passages  in 
the  singular  address  and  those  in  the  plural  have  terms  and  con- 
ceptions in  common,  they  have  some  consistently  different  term 
for  the  same  event  or  object,  and  each  in  addition  has  a  list  of 
words  peculiar  to  itself  and  a  list  of  favourite  interests  different 
from  that  of  the  other.  It  seems  to  me,  therefore,  that  the 
case  for  two  sources  in  Deuteronomy,  thus  distinguished,  is,  if 
not  proved,  very  probable ;  and  that  it  will  supplant  the  older 
distinction  between  the  hortatory  and  legal  sections  on  which 
critics  were  always  divided.  But  Stark  and  Steuernagel,  while 
striking  on  a  true  distinction,  have  not  corrected  their  analysis 
of  it  in  Deuteronomy  by  comparison  with  its  appearance  in  the 
contemporary  Jeremiah  and  other  writers.  The  same  objection 
seems  to  me  to  be  valid  against  Mitchell's  simpler  analysis  in 
the  Aratnc?ir\  Journal  of  Biblical  Literature  for  1899.  —  In  the 
Priestly  Legislation,  Lev.  i.  17-26  has  long  been  regarded  by 
critics  as  distinct  in  character  and  style  from  the  rest  of  the  code. 
(See  Driver,  lutrod.  to  Lit.  of  Old  Testajjient,  49  ff.) :  and  in  the 
latter  many  obviously  later  additions  appear. 


44         MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

the  Hexateuch:  that  is  to  say,  not  only  differ- 
ences of  style  but  the  presence  of  double  accounts 
of  the  same  event.  In  the  Books  of  Samuel  this 
latter  feature  is  present  to  a  still  greater  degree 
than  in  the  narratives  of  the  Hexateuch ;  but  it 
is  not  so  possible  to  discern  in  the  Books  of 
Samuel  all  the  main  documents  which  run 
through  the  history  from  beginning  to  end. 
What  is  clear  is,  that  the  historical  Books 
contain  many  records  and  traditions,  some  of 
them  treating  the  same  events  v^ith  differences 
both  of  style  and  substance.^  Equally  evident 
is  the  hand  of  the  editor  or  editors  who  compiled 
them,  and  who  not  only  added  various  statistics 
and  recurrent  formulas  designed  to  frame  them 
into  a  continuous  history,  but  placed  the  whole 
of  that  history  under  a  certain  moral  judgement, 
to  which  expression  is  given  in  language  distinct 
from  that  of  the  materials  he  employed.^  And 
again,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Hexateuch,  these 
conclusions  have  been  reached  only  as  the  result 
of  long  research  and  debate  by  many  critics,  who, 
differing  in  details,  have  gradually  approached 
unanimity  upon  the  main  lines  just  indicated. 

The  analysis  of  the  prophetical  and  of  the 
poetical  Books  presents  us  with  greater  diffi- 
culties.    The  process  is  not  so  old  nor  quite  so 

1  E.g.  the  accounts  of  the  institution  of  the  Kingdom,  of  the 
meeting  of  Saul  and  David,  and  of  the  end  of  Saul. 

2  See  further  below,  pp.  65  f. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    45 

thorough  as  in  the  case  of  the  Hexateuch,  and 
upon  some  of  the  results  there  is  a  still  wider 
divergence  of  opinion.  Within  the  last  ten  years 
the  dissection  of  several  prophetical  books  has  been 
carried  to  an  extent  which  represents  rather  the  in- 
genuity of  a  few  critics  than  the  settled  consensus 
of  the  majority.  But,  excepting  these  latest  pro- 
posals as  still  under  judgement,  we  observe  the 
same  tendency  in  criticism  as  we  have  already 
noted:  the  steady  approximation  to  the  belief 
that  many  of  the  larger  books  of  prophecy  are 
compilations  from  several  sources.  For  this  the 
evidence  is  partly  that  of  language  and  style  — 
it  has  become  very  clear  that  many  terms  and 
grammatical  forms  were  not  in  use  till  towards 
the  Exile  —  but  the  most  cogent  proofs  are  drawn 
from  the  expression  of  opposite  religious  tempers. 
Both  in  the  larger  and  smaller  prophecies  there 
are  obvious  interpolations.  Generations  sub- 
sequent to  the  original  prophet  made  qualifica- 
tions of,  or  additions  to,  his  oracles,  in  order  to 
adapt  them  to  the  changed  circumstances  or 
altered  tempers  of  the  people,  and  so  to  per- 
petuate their  religious  significance.  To  this 
subject  we  shall  return  in  a  later  Lecture. 

The  critical  analysis  of  the  Old  Testament  is 
therefore  not  only  a  movement  of  considerable, 
age,  and  pursued  by  a  long  and  varied  succession 
of   experts;    but  by  rational  methods  and   upon 


46         MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

intelligible  evidence,  derived  from  the  sacred 
text,  it  has  produced  certain  large  results  on 
which  the  vast  majority  of  critics  are  more  and 
more  approaching  to  unanimity.  There  is,  there- 
fore, no  ground  either  for  those  who  attack  the 
science  of  Old  Testament  criticism  as  hasty 
and  its  conclusions  as  raw;  or  for  those  who 
predict  a  reaction  from  the  conclusions  as 
certain  as  the  reaction  which  arose  in  New 
Testament  criticism  against  the  theories  of 
the  extreme  Tubingen  school.  The  Tubingen 
theories  were  largely  deductions  from  the  prin- 
ciples of  a  certain  philosophy  of  history.  But 
the  proofs  of  Old  Testament  criticism  are  not 
a  priori :  the  argument  is  inductive  and  the  facts 
are  furnished  by  the  Old  Testament  itself.^ 

II.    The  Criticism  of  the  Old  Testament 
mainly  Historical. 

The  criticism  of  the  Old  Testament,  however, 
is  not  merely  literary  ;  and  here  we  have  to  meet 
the  second  charge  which  its  opponents  have 
preferred  against  it.^  In  their  recent  writings 
Professors    Sayce  and  Hommel   have,  with   con- 

1  It  is  indeed  striking  that  the  attempt  to  prove  the  late  date  of 
the  Levitical  legislation  from  principles  of  the  Hegelian  philoso- 
phy, which  Vatke  made  in  1833,  should  have  been  ignored  in  the 
history  of  criticism;  and  that  that  late  date  should  not  have  been 
accepted  till  Graf  and  others  proved  it  by  inductive  evidence  in 
1866  and  following  years. 

2  See  above,  p.  31. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    47 

siderable  persistence,  represented  the  Higher 
Criticism  as  if  it  were  only  the  analysis  of  the 
text  of  the  Old  Testament  into  different  docu- 
ments upon  the  evidence  of  language  and  style. 
And  they  assert  that  the  evidence  alleged  cannot 
but  be  precarious,  because  estimated  by  scholars 
with  very  different  tastes  and  standards  from 
those  of  the  people  among  whom  the  Old  Testa- 
ment arose.  Nothing  could  be  further  from  the 
truth.  Look  at  what  we  have  already  seen  with 
regard  to  the  discrimination  of  the  documents. 
We  have  seen  that  this  depends  not  only  upon 
differences  of  vocabulary,  phrase  and  idiom,  but 
still  more  upon  differences  of  fact  and  substance 
in  narratives  which  relate  the  same  events. 

Take  the  different  stories  of  the  origin  of  the 
name  of  Bethel.^  It  is  impossible  to  believe  that 
these  came  from  the  same  hand.  Or  take  the 
Book  of  Joshua.  Throughout  its  chapters  there 
are  visible  two  differing  accounts  of  the  conquest 
of  Western  Palestine  by  the  Israelites.  One  of 
them  represents  the  conquest  and  division  of 
the  land  to  have  been  thorough  and  effected  in 
one  generation  by  the  whole  people  acting  to- 
gether; the  other  represents  it  as  the  work  of 
the  tribes  acting  separately,  and  as  being  far  from 
complete.  Here  are  differences  of  fact,  which 
are  not  dependent  for  their  distinction  upon 
differences  of  phrase  and  idiom;    yet  are  corro- 

1  See  above,  p.  38. 


48         MODERN   CRITICISM  AND  THE 

borated  by  these,  for  the  parts  of  the  Book  which 
represent  the  Conquest  as  complete  under  Joshua 
are  composed  in  the  language  of  the  Deuterono- 
micand  Priestly  writers,^  while  those  who  report  it 
to  have  been  incomplete  are  written  in  the  style  of 
the  Jahwist.2  But  that  is  not  all.  I  have  already 
f  said  that  a  linguistic  analysis  is  often  unable  to 
distinguish  between  the  Jahwist  and  the  Elohist, 
and  this  is  especially  the  case  in  the  Book  of 
Joshua.  All  the  more  striking  therefore  are 
certain  differences  of  fact  in  this  double  docu- 
ment. For  instance,  in  the  story  of  the  crossing 
of  the  Jordan,  as  told  in  Joshua  iii.  and  iv.,  there 
are  two  accounts  of  the  monument  set  up  to 
commemorate  the  passage.  One  of  them  builds 
it  at  Gilgal  on  the  west  bank  with  stones  taken 
from  the  river-bed  by  the  people;^  the  other 
builds  it  in  the  bed  of  the  river  with  twelve 
stones  set  there  by  Joshua.*  Similarly,  in  chap- 
ter vi.  two  stories  have  been  interwoven,  but 
are  still  distinguishable  :  one  which  relates  how 
Israel  marched  round  Jericho  on  seven  successive 
days,  the  first  six  they  marched  in  silence,  but 
on   the   seventh    they    shouted    at  the   word  of 

1  E.g.  X.  28-43,  xi.  2,  3,  6,  9-12,  14-23,  xii.  xiii.  2-12,  14, 
xxi.  43-45,  xxii.  1-15,  xxiii.  —  Deuteronomic :  and  xiv.  1-5,  xv. 
(except  13-19  and  63),  xvi.  4-8,  xvii.  \a,  ^rl^  9  (Partly),  10, 
xviii.  iia,  12-28,  xix.  1-46,  48,  51  —  Priestly. 

2  XV.  63,  xvi.  10,  xvii.  11-18,  with  which  agrees  the  account  of 
a  partial  conquest  in  Judges  i. 

3  iv.  1-8,  20.  ^  iv.  9. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    49 

Joshua  and  the  walls  fell ;  ^  and  another  which 
relates  that  a  portion  of  the  armed  men  marched 
round  the  city  seven  times  on  the  same  day, 
having  in  their  midst  the  ark,  and  that  on  the 
seventh  round  the  people  shouted  at  the  signal 
of  the  trumpets  and  the  walls  fell.^  Similarly 
in  chapter  viii.  we  find  two  accounts  of  the 
ambush  against  Ai,  according  to  one  of  which 
the  ambush  consisted  of  30,000  men  and  was 
despatched  to  its  position  by  Joshua  either  from 
Gilgal  or  soon  after  the  main  army  left  Gilgal; 
while  according  to  the  other  the  ambush  con- 
sisted of  5000  men  and  was  not  detached  from 
the  army  till  the  latter  had  arrived  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  Ai.^  The  existence  of  all  these 
*  doublets '  is  not,  I  repeat,  proved  by  differences 
of  vocabulary  or  of  style,  for  we  are  generally 
unable  to  say  which  is  from  the  Jahwist  and 
which  from  the  Elohist ;  it  is  proved  by  difference 
of  facts  in  the  substance  of  the  narrative.  / 

Hitherto  I  have  dealt  only  with  the  proofs 
of   the  presence  of   different  documents  in  the 

1  Verses  3,  7^,  10,  11  (partly),  14,  15a,  and  it  came  to  pass  .  .  . 
manner,  i$d,  20,  and  the  people  shouted. 

2  Verses  4  (partly),  5,  7<^,  8,  9,  parts  of  13  and  15,  16^;,  20b. 
Cf.  especially  verses  16  and  20 :  in  the  latter  the  people  shout 
both  before  and  after  the  trumpets,  though  verse  16  enjoins  on 
them  not  to  shout  till  the  trumpets  give  the  signal.  Wellhausen 
was  the  first  to  point  out  the  distinction. 

3  The  first  account  can  be  traced  in  verses  3-9 ;  the  second  in 
verses  10-14.  For  the  analysis  of  the  two  accounts  through  the 
rest  of  the  chapter,  see  Bennett's  'Joshua 'in  Haupt's  Sacred 
Books  of  the  Old  Testament. 

D 


50  MODERN   CRITICISM  AND   THE 

Hexateuch.  But  now  let  us  look  at  the  problem 
of  the  dates  of  these  documents.  Here  again 
the  evidence  for  the  critical  solution  is  not  alto- 
gether that  of  language  and  style.  On  the  con- 
trary, historical  evidence  has  been  predominant 
at  every  step  of  the  argument :  and  in  particular 
has  decided  almost  by  itself  the  principal  change 
of  opinion  which  criticism  has  made  on  this 
subject.  At  first  the  Jahwist-Elohist  and  the 
Deuteronomic  documents  were  assigned,  on  ac- 
count of  their  historical  allusions,  to  a  date  after 
the  beginning  of  the  Monarchy ;  but  the  Priestly 
Document,  which  has  many  archaic  features 
and  which  betrays  no  allusion  to  the  later 
history,  was  considered  the  earliest  of  the  four. 
It  was  the  introduction  of  other  phenomena, 
historical  in  character,  which  forced  critics  to 
abandon  this  opinion  and  to  seek  for  the  Priestly 
Document  a  much  later  date.  The  change  came 
about  upon  two  lines  of  reasoning.  The  first 
was  this.  When  the  collections  of  laws  which  the 
documents  contain  were  compared,  it  was  seen 
that  they  exhibited  different  stages  of  what  was 
fundamentally  the  same  legislation ;  the  simplest 
of  these  stages  is  found  in  the  Jahwist-Elohist,^ 
the  next  in  Deuteronomy,^  the  most  complex 
and  elaborate  in  the  Priestly  Writing.^  Or,  as  this 
way   of   putting   the   matter  does   scant   justice 

[1  Ex.  xx.-xxii.,  xxxiv.,  14-26.  2  j^Qxit.  xii.-xxvi. 

3  Ex.  xxv.-xxxi.,  Levit.,  Num.  i.-xix. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    51 

to  the  differences,  we  may  say  that  while  the 
legislation  in  the  Jahwist-Elohist  is  suited  to  a 
purely  agricultural  people,  the  Deuteronomic 
meets  the  necessities  of  a  community  more  highly 
organised  and  equipped,  with  foreign  relations 
and  subject  to  religious  temptations  to  which  in 
the  days  of  the  early  kings  Israel  was  not  exposed  ; 
while,  besides,  there  is  in  Deuteronomy's  modi- 
fication of  the  Jahwist-Elohist  laws  evidence  of 
the  influence  of  the  eighth-century  prophets. 
The  Priestly  Legislation  on  the  other  hand 
cannot  be  understood  in  many  of  its  provisions 
except  in  the  light  of  the  Exile,  and  of  the  greater 
Influence  which  the  priesthood  assumed  in  Israel 
after  the  return  from  Babylon.  On  the  subjects 
of  sacrifice,  the  priesthood,  the  gifts  due  to  the 
priests  and  kindred  matters,  there  is  an  almost 
perfectly  consistent  increase  of  elaboration  and 
rigour  from  the  laws  of  the  Jahwist-Elohist, 
through  those  of  Deuteronomy  to  those  of  the 
Priestly  Legislation.^  I  am  not  now  defending 
the  conclusion  to  which  most  critics  adhere,  that 
therefore  the  Jahwist-Elohist  is  the  earliest  of 
the  Documents,  and  the  Priestly  the  latest, 
Deuteronomy  coming  in  between :  I  am  only 
showing  that  critics  reached  that  conclusion  on 
historical  evidence.     Again,  critics  remarked  the 

1  For  details  see  Driver's  Commentary  on  Deuteronomy, 
chaps,  xii.-xxvi. ;  or  the  present  writer's  notes  to  the  same 
chapters  in  Haupt's  Sacred  Books  of  the  Old  Testament. 


52         MODERN   CRITICISM  AND  THE 

fact  that  the  early  history  of  Israel  exhibited 
no  traces  of  the  influence  or  existence  of  any  of 
the  three  legal  codes,  but  that,  on  the  contrary, 
the  religious  leaders  of  Israel  from  Gideon  to 
Elisha  behaved  as  if  there  were  no  such  laws  in 
existence  as  those  (at  least)  of  Deuteronomy  and 
the  Priestly  code.  Again  I  have  no  room  to  go 
into  the  detailed  proof,^  and  my  purpose  is  simply 
to  point  out  the  character  of  the  evidence  of 
which  it  consists. 

On  both  these  lines  of  proof  for  the  date  of 
the  documents,  the  evidence,  therefore,  is  his- 
torical and  is  supplied  by  the  Old  Testament 
itself.  It  is,  of  course,  supported  by  philological 
evidence.  The  language  and  the  style  of  the 
Jahwist-Elohist  are  earlier  than  that  of  Deutero- 
nomy; and  both  the  ordinary  vocabulary  and 
the  lists  of  proper  names  in  the  Priestly  Writing 
exhibit  many  traces  of  a  late  date.^  But  all  this 
is  only  corroboratory  of  a  conclusion  reached 
independently  and  upon  the  evidence  of  the 
sacred  history  itself.  Let  me  repeat,  this  prin- 
cipal conclusion  of  modern  criticism,  —  that  the 
written  Law  of  Israel,  in  the  three  forms  in  which 
we  possess  it,  cannot  have  been  the  work  of 
Moses  or  of  the  Mosaic,  or  immediately  post- 
Mosaic,  age,  but  must  be  assigned  to  a  much 

1  See  the  introductions  to  Driver's  Commentary  on  Deutero- 
nomy, and  to  Addis's  Documents  of  the  Hexateuch. 

"  G.  B.  Gray,  Studies  in  Hebrew  Proper  N'aines:  London,  1896. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT     53 

later  date,  —  has  been  reached  not  by  the  methods 
of  literary  analysis,  but  on  lines  of  historical  evi- 
dence furnished  by  the  earlier  chronicles  of  Israel 
themselves. 

Let  us  now  take  a  similar  instance  from  the 
prophets.  The  opponents  of  criticism  have  often 
alleged  that  the  conclusion,  by  which  Isaiah  xl. 
and  following  chapters  are  taken  from  Isaiah 
himself  and  assigned  to  a  prophet  on  the  eve 
of  the  Return  from  Exile,  is  due  to  a  dogmatic 
prejudice  against  the  capacity  of  Isaiah  himself 
to  predict  events  so  far  beyond  his  own  time^  and 
is  supported  mainly  upon  grounds  of  language 
and  style.  Neither  of  these  allegations  is  correct. 
What  has  compelled  critics  to  date  Isaiah  xl.  and 
following  chapters  from  the  close  of  the  Baby- 
lonian Captivity  has  been  the  historical  evidence 
furnished  by  the  chapters  themselves.  These 
chapters  nowhere  claim  to  be  by  Isaiah,  and  do 
not  present  a  single  reflection  of  his  time.  But 
they  plainly  set  forth,  as  having  already  taken 
place,  certain  events  which  happened  from  a 
century  to  a  century  and  a  half  after  Isaiah  had 
passed  away :  the  Babylonian  Exile  and  Cap- 
tivity, the  ruin  of  Jerusalem  and  the  devastation 
of  the  Holy  Land.  Israel  is  addressed  as  having 
exhausted  the  time  of  her  penalty,  and  is  ex- 
horted to  leave  Babylon,  because  the  door  of  her 
deliverance  is  immediately  to  open,  and  as  if  her 
return  to  the  Holy  Land   depended   now   upon 


54         MODERN   CPvITICISM  AND   THE 

herself.  Cyrus  is  named  as  her  deliverer,  and  is 
described  as  already  called  upon  his  career  and 
blessed  with  victory  by  Jahweh.  Nor  is  all  this 
predicted  as  if  from  the  standpoint  of  a  previous 
century;  but  it  is  taken  for  granted  as  the  very 
basis  of  the  prophet's  argument.  Cyrus  him- 
self is  not  merely  represented  to  be  above  the 
horizon  and  upon  the  flowing  tide  of  victory,  as 
a  prophet  might  possibly  realise  him  to  be  before 
he  actually  appeared.  But  he  and  his  victories 
are  appealed  to  as  the  unmistakeable  proof  that 
former  prophecies  of  Israel's  deliverance  from 
Babylon  are  at  last  being  fulfilled.  Would  it 
have  been  possible  for  the  prophet  to  make  such 
an  appeal,  either  to  Israel  or  to  the  heathen,  un- 
less Cyrus  had  been  within  the  ken  of  them  both? 
Unless  Cyrus  and  his  early  victories  were  already 
historical  facts,  the  whole  argument  in  Isaiah  xl.- 
xlviii.  is  unintelligible.  You  observe,  then,  that 
all  this  criticism  which  assigns  these  chapters  to 
the  eve  of  the  Return  from  Exile  is  historical, 
and  is  independent  of  the  literary  analysis  of 
the  text,  which,  however,  greatly  corroborates  it. 
Moreover,  except  for  the  date  of  Cyrus,  which 
is  determined  by  the  cuneiform  inscriptions,  the 
historical  evidence  in  question  is  drawn  entirely 
from  the  Bible  itself. 

Let  us  take  from  the  historical  books  one  other 
example  of  the  same  method.  There  is  no  Book 
in  the  Old  Testament,  whose  place  in  the  Canon 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT     55 

and  whose  value  as  a  record  of  historical  fact  have 
been  rendered  more  precarious  by  criticism  than 
the  Books  of  Chronicles.  These  two  books, 
which  are  really  one,  include  the  same  period, 
whose  history  is  related  in  the  Books  of  Samuel 
and  of  Kings.  They  treat  many  of  the  same 
episodes  and  of  the  same  personalities.  But  they 
treat  these  with  a  great  difference.  For  the 
details  I  must  refer  you  to  the  article  by 
Professor  Francis  Brown  in  Hastings's  Bible 
Dictionary.'^  For  our  present  purpose  it  is 
sufficient  to  point  out  that,  when  the  parallel 
narratives  in  Samuel-Kings  and  in  Chronicles 
are  compared,  it  is  found  that  the  Chronicler 
has  increased  the  numbers  of  the  troops  en- 
gaged in  the  campaigns  described,  of  the  men 
slain,  and  of  the  slaves,  the  cattle  and  the 
objects  of  value  taken  captive  or  brought  as 
tribute  to  the  victors;  that  he  has  enhanced 
the  characters  of  some  of  the  leading  person- 
alities, like  David  and  Solomon;  and  that  he 
has  imputed  to  the  period  of  the  Monarchy  the 
establishment  and  elaboration  of  all  the  ritual 
and  the  law  enforced  by  the  Priestly  Document. 
This  comparison  with  Samuel-Kings  makes  it 
at  once  evident  that  we  cannot  accept  the 
Chronicler  as  an  authority  for  the  pre-exilic 
history  of   Israel,  but  must  consider   his   Book 

1  See  also  the  article  in  the  Ertcyc.  Biblica  ;  and  Robertson 
Smith,  The  Old  Testament  in  the  Jewish  Church,  pp.  140  ff. 


56         MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

as  a  homiletic  treatment  of  that  history  from 
the  standpoint  of  generations  after  the  Exile, 
when  the  Priestly  Legislation  had  so  long  been 
in  force  that  it  was  impossible  to  imagine  any 
part  of  Israel's  history  as  without  it.^ 

These  are  such  fundamental  and  such  obvious 
instances  of  the  results  of  modern  criticism  upon 
the  Old  Testament  that  I  am  almost  ashamed 
to  bring  them  before  you.  But  the  repetition 
of  them  is  rendered  necessary,  not  only  by  the 
common  opinion  of  a  large  portion  of  the  Church, 
but  by  the  assertions  of  scholars  I  have  named 
and  of  a  number  of  other  writers,  that  modern 
criticism  is  mainly  dependent  upon  the  preca- 
rious methods  of  literary  analysis.  How  amply 
the  instances  quoted  disprove  this,  and  how  fully 
they  discover  the  main  conclusions  of  critics  to 
be  based  upon  historical  evidence  derived  from  « 
the  Old  Testament  itself,  I  do  not  require  further 
to  demonstrate. 

TIL    Criticism  and  Archceology, 

Hitherto  we  have  looked  only  at  the  evidence 
which  criticism  finds  within  the  sacred  records  of 
Israel.  But  our  century  has  been  one  not  only  of 
Biblical  research,  but  of  the  discovery  and  exami- 
nation of  the  histories  and  religions  of  the  peoples 
who   surrounded    Palestine   and   who   were   one 

1  Cf.  Robertson  Smith,  op.  cit.,  p.  140. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    57 

with  ancient  Israel  in  blood,  custom  and  mental 
equipment.  Sixty  or  seventy  years  ago  almost 
our  sole  record  for  the  history  of  the  world,  of 
which  the  kingdom  of  Israel  formed  a  small 
province,  was  the  Old  Testament.  But  now  — 
in  Babylonia,  Egypt  and  Phoenicia ;  in  Bashan, 
Moab,  Edom  and  Sinai ;  in  Central  and  Southern 
Arabia  —  there  have  been  unearthed  and  de- 
ciphered a  vast  multitude  of  monuments  which 
not  only  afford  us  the  most  ample  material  for 
testing  the  chronology  of  the  Old  Testament, 
and  defining  the  exact  nature  of  many  of  the 
historical  events  in  it,  but  which  have  uncovered 
to  us  the  civilisation  and  religion  of  the  tribes 
who  were  Israel's  neighbours  and  Israel's  kinsmen 
according  to  the  flesh.  With  all  this  evidence  we 
can  compare,  in  Arabia  and  Syria,  the  still  current 
life  of  tribes  of  the  same  race  in  the  same  natural 
environment.  It  will  be  obvious  how  all  this 
archaeology  and  ethnology  must  enable  criticism 
to  attack  the  chief  of  the  problems  bequeathed 
by  the  New  Testament:  the  problem  of  tracing 
throughout  the  Old  Testament  a  progressive  re- 
velation. That,  however,  forms  the  subject  of 
another  lecture;  and  I  will  now  consider  only 
the  general  attitude  of  recent  criticism  to  all  the 
historical  and  archaeological  evidence  which  has 
been  gathered  from  fields  outside  the  Old  Testa- 
ment. 

Of  recent  years  the  conclusions  of  the  Higher 


58         MODERN   CRITICISM  AND   THE 

Criticism  have  been  attacked  in  the  name  of 
archaeology,  and  by  none  with  more  persistence 
than  the  two  eminent  scholars  I  have  named: 
Professor  Sayce  and  Professor  HommeL  They 
have  asserted  that  *  archaeology  is  on  the  side  of 
tradition  and  not  of  the  critics/  ^  upon  the  cardinal 
question  of  the  Old  Testament :  the  dates  and 
composition  of  the  Hexateuch.  And,  as  proof  of 
this,  they  have  alleged  what  they  call  *  the  re- 
luctance of  the  critics  to  accept  the  discoveries 
of  the  archaeologists.'  Let  us  inquire  what 
grounds  there  are  for  these  charges. 

Criticism,  as  we  have  seen,  has  discovered  four 
main  documents  in  the  Hexateuch,  which  it  has 
assigned  to  various  dates  from  the  ninth  or  eighth 
to  the  sixth  or  fifth  centuries  before  Christ. 
Professor  Sayce's  argument  appears  to  be  that 
this  conclusion  is  largely  due  to  the  critics'  belief 
that  the  art  of  writing  was  not  practised  in  Israel 
till  about  David's  time,  or  the  end  of  the  eleventh 
century  before  Christ,  and  that  till  then  legisla- 
tion and  tradition  were  only  oral.  In  disproof 
of  such  a  belief  Professor  Sayce  appeals  to  the 
so-called  Tell  el  Amarna  letters.  These  clay 
tablets,  which  date  from  about  1400  b.c,  or  more 
than  a  century  before  the  commonly  received 
date  of  the  Exodus,  represent  a  frequent  and 
detailed  correspondence  between  the  court  of 
Egypt  on  the  one  hand  and  its  representatives 

1  Sayce,  Cont.  Rev.,  vol.  Ixx.,  1896,  p.  730. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT     59 

in  Palestine  and  the  rulers  of  the  kingdoms  of 
Mesopotamia  on  the  other.  The  writing  is  in 
the  cuneiform  character,  and  the  language  that 
of  Babylonia.  The  tablets,  therefore,  prove  that 
some  of  the  culture  of  Babylonia,  perhaps  even 
including  its  literature,  had  spread  across  the 
whole  of  Western  Asia,  at  least  a  century  before 
the  Exodus.  From  this  Professor  Sayce  infers 
that  the  Israelites,  when  in  the  land  of  Goshen 
and  upon  their  wanderings  through  the  Desert, 
must  have  known  how  to  read  and  write,  must 
have  been  acquainted  with  Babylonian  literature, 
and  must  have  been  able  to  appreciate  and  make 
use  of  Babylonian  documents,  the  translation  of 
some  of  which  he  thinks  can  be  identified  in 
portions  of  the  Book  of  Genesis. 

Now,  in  the  first  place,  it  is  necessary  to  note 
that  the  Tell  el  Amarna  letters  are  only  the  docu- 
ments of  high  Egyptian  or  Mesopotamian  officials, 
and  of  chiefs  of  settled  tribes  in  Palestine ;  and 
that  to  argue  from  their  habits  to  those  of  a 
semi-nomadic  race,  such  as  Israel  were  still  in 
Goshen  and  the  Desert,  is  not  very  safe.^     But 

1  As  has  often  been  pointed  out,  the  tribes  which  live  to-day  on 
the  borders  of  Egypt  and  Canaan,  half-settled  and  half-nomadic, 
do  not,  for  all  their  contact  with  the  civilised  and  half-civilised 
populations  of  these  lands,  learn  to  read  and  write.  Reading  and 
writing  are  arts,  of  which  the  Bedawee  tribes  do  not  see  the  need, 
and  frequently  despise.  From  the  culture  and  habits  of  corre- 
spondence of  the  court  of  Egypt  and  its  representatives  in  Canaan, 
it  is  very  little  less  difficult  to  infer  that  the  Israelite  shepherds 
could  write,  than  to  employ  the  existence  of  the  postal  system 


6o         MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

suppose  we  admit  that  the  chiefs  of  Israel  were 
in  official  contact  with  the  Egyptian  authorities 
during  Israel's  residence  in  Goshen,  and  that  they 
did  learn  from  their  employment  in  the  building 
operations  of  Pharaoh  the  arts  of  reading  and 
writing  which  were  so  highly  developed  in  Egypt. 
Suppose  that  we  grant  (and  I  for  one  am  not 
inclined  to  deny  this)  that  there  were  leaders  in 
Israel  at  the  time  of  the  Exodus  who  could  write, 
or  have  writings  made  for  them,  just  as  Abd-hiba 
of  Jerusalem  and  other  petty  chieftains  of  Palestine 
did.  We  have  not,  therefore,  proved  that  the  docu- 
ments which  compose  the  Pentateuch  were  written 
in  the  time  of  Moses.  We  have  not  secured  one 
iota  of  evidence  to  counterbalance  the  proofs, 
derived  from  the  history  of  Israel  itself,  that  the 
Pentateuchal  legislation  was  not  in  existence  in 
the  time  of  the  Judges  or  of  the  earlier  Kings. 
Few  critics  have  committed  themselves  to  the 
absolute  negative,  that  early  Israel  did  not  know 
how  to  write;  nor  do  any  of  the  arguments  for 
the  late  date  of  the  Hexateuch  rest  upon  a  reason 
which,  even  if  it  were  probable,  is  so  impossible 
to  prove. 

The  other  discoveries  of  archaeologists  which 
have  to  do  with  the  Pentateuch  are  the  Baby- 
lonian tablets  —  with  stories  of  the  Creation  and 

and  telegraph  in  the  Turkish  Empire  and  the  dominions  of  the 
Khedive  to  illustrate  the  culture  of  the  nomads  in  the  deserts 
which  lie  on  their  borders. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    6i 

Flood,  or  with  annals  which  cover  the  events 
described  in  Genesis  xiv.  —  and  the  Egyptian 
monuments  which  depict  the  conditions  of  life 
reflected  in  the  story  of  Joseph.  We  have  not 
now  to  consider  how  far  the  evidence  furnished 
by  all  these  proves  the  historical  value  of  the 
Pentateuch.  That  question  will  come  up  in  next 
Lecture.  Our  present  inquiry  is,  how  far  the 
Babylonian  and  Egyptian  monuments  affect  the 
conclusions  of  critics  with  regard  to  the  dates  of 
the  Pentateuchal  documents. 

The  Babylonian  stories  of  the  Creation  and 
Flood  were  probably  in  existence  by  a  very 
early  date.^  At  the  Oriental  Congress  in  Paris 
in  1897  it  was  announced  that  Father  Scheil  had 
discovered  on  a  tablet  from  Sippara  of  date 
about  2250  B.C.  a  recension  of  the  Babylonian 
story  of  the  Flood.  This  has  evidently  been 
copied  from  a  still  older  tablet,  for  here  and 
there  the  scribe  has  inserted  the  word  *  lacuna/ 
The  story  of  the  Flood  may,  therefore,  be  carried 
back  as  far  as  3000  B.C.  But  however  early  be 
its  date  or  the  dates  of  the  various  versions  of 
the   Creation-Epos,  it  is  evident  that  they  can 

1  In  the  British  Museum  we  find  them  on  tablets  from  the 
Royal  Library  at  Nineveh  of  the  eighth  and  seventh  centuries  B.C. 
See  the  newly  issued  Guide  to  the  Babylonian  and  Assyrian  Collec- 
tions (1900),  pp.  36  ff.  For  translations  see  Records  of  the  Past^ 
new  series,  vol.  i.  122  ff.,  by  Prof.  Sayce ;  Gunkel's  Sch'6pfu7ig u. 
Chaos,  pp.  401  ff.  by  Zimmern ;  and  Authority  and  Archaology, 
ed.  by  D.  G.  Hogarth  (London,  1899),  pp.  10  ff. 


62         MODERN   CRITICISM  AND   THE 

have  no  bearing  on  the  question  of  the  dates  of 
the  Hebrew  documents,  —  whether  the  Jahwist- 
Elohist  or  the  Priestly,  —  which  contain  accounts 
of  the  Creation  and  Flood  founded  on  the  Baby- 
lonian. We  are  ignorant  of  the  time  at  which 
the  Hebrews  received  these  stories;  while  in  their 
Biblical  form  they  exhibit  so  many  differences 
from  the  Babylonian  as  to  make  it  probable 
that  the  materials  were  used  by  the  writers  of 
the  Pentateuchal  documents  only  after  long 
tradition  within  a  Hebrew  atmosphere. 

Nor  in  the  light  which  the  monuments  throw 
upon  Genesis  xiv.  is  there  any  evidence  as  to 
when  that  chapter  was  written.  We  are  still  with- 
out the  proof  that  its  accounts  of  Babylonian 
campaigns  are  confirmed  by  Babylonian  annals 
dealing  with  the  same  events;  and  even  if  we 
had  this  proof,  there  would  remain  the  possi- 
bility, for  which  there  is  some  evidence,  that 
Genesis  xiv.  is  a  Hebrew  fragment  from  the 
Exile  based  on  Babylonian  materials.  In  any 
case  this  chapter  cannot  be  used  in  the  discussion 
of  the  critical  conclusions  as  to  the  date  of  the 
four  main  constituents  of  the  Hexateuch,  for  it 
lies  outside  them  all.^ 

Again,  the  portrait  of  Egyptian  life  presented 
by  the   story   of  Joseph   in  the  Jahwist-Elohist 

1  Full  statements  and  discussions  of  the  Babylonian  evidence 
as  to  the  names,  etc.,  in  Gen.  xiv.  will  be  found  in  Driver's 
Authority  a7td  ArchcFolot^y,  pp.  39  ff.,  and  in  article  '  Chedorlaomer ' 
in  the  Encyclopcedia  Biblica.     See  below,  p.  100. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    63 

document  has  been  appealed  to,  as  proof  that 
the  writer  lived  at  a  time  when  Israel,  from  their 
long  residence  in  Goshen,  were  still  familiar  with 
Egypt.  But  the  life,  which  the  story  of  Joseph 
portrays,  was  the  life  of  Egypt  not  only  in 
Joseph's  time.  In  the  same  moulds  it  persisted 
for  centuries  after  the  Exodus,  and  under  the 
Monarchy  Israel  had  many  opportunities  of  be- 
coming acquainted  with  it.  So  that  the  vivid  and 
accurate  descriptions  of  Egypt,  which  surround 
the  figure  of  Pharaoh's  Hebrew  vizier,  are  no 
conclusive  proof  of  the  ancient  origin  of  the 
document  which  tells  the  story.  On  the  contrary, 
the  only  Egyptian  data  in  that  story  to  which 
archceologists  can  attach  an  approximate  age, 
appear  to  offer  some  confirmation  of  the  late 
period  to  which  critics  have  assigned  the 
Jahwist-Elohist  document.  The  Egyptian  names 
Zaphenath-Pa'aneah,  Potipherah,  and  Asenath 
belong  to  types  of  names  which  do  not  appear, 
or  are  not  frequent,  on  the  Egyptian  monu- 
ments   till    some    centuries   after    the   Exodus.^ 

1  The  type  to  which  Zaphenath-Pa'aneah  belongs  occurs  first 
under  the  Twentieth  Dynasty  in  the  thirteenth  century  B.C.,  and 
is  frequent  only  under  the  Twenty-second  in  the  tenth  century. 
The  type  to  which  Potipherah  belongs  appears  in  one  instance 
under  the  Eighteenth  Dynasty,  though  not  then  attached  to  a 
native  Egyptian,  and  otherwise  occurs  first  under  the  Twenty- 
second  Dynasty,  but  is  not  frequent  till  the  Twenty-sixth,  664-525 
B.C.  The  type  to  which  Asenath  belongs  has  a  few  early  in- 
stances, but  is  frequent  only  under  the  Twenty-first  Dynasty,  in 
the  eleventh  century  and  later. 


64         MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

From  these  facts,  reached  in  complete  indepen- 
dence of  criticism,  the  Egyptologists  *  Steindorff, 
Brugsch,  and  Ebers  all  agree  in  inferring  that 
the  names  in  question  did  not  originate  before 
the  Ninth  Century  b.c'  ^  But  if  this  be  so, 
the  only  archaeological  evidence  which  proves 
anything  with  regard  to  the  dates  of  the 
Hexateuchal  documents  points  in  the  same 
direction  as  the  critical  arguments  which  assign 
the  Jahwist-Elohist  to  the  ninth  or  the  eighth 
century. 

Before  we  leave  the  Hexateuch  let  me  call  your 
attention  to  the  fact  that  the  critical  theory  of 
its  compilation  from  several  sources  receives  one 
strong  confirmation  from  the  archaeological  side. 
Professor  Sayce  himself  admits  that  such  a 
compilation  is  *  fully  in  accordance  with  the 
teachings  of  Oriental  archaeology,'  which  has 
shown  us  that  the  ancient  writings  of  the  neigh- 
bours and  kinsfolk  of  Israel  were  also  of  a  com- 
posite character.  Let  me  quote  his  own  words : 
*  The  composite  character  of  the  Pentateuch, 
therefore,  is  only  what  a  study  of  similar  con- 
temporaneous literature  brought  to  light  by 
modern  research  would  lead  us  to  expect'  ^  And 
it  is  remarkable  that  Professor  Sayce,  who  has 
so  strenuously  assailed  the  conclusions  of  critics 
with  regard  to  the  Pentateuch,  should  admit  that 

1  Driver,  article  'Joseph'  in  Hastings's  Bible  Dictionary,  ii.  775. 

2  Monutnents,  pp.  31,  34;  cf.  History  of  the  Hebrews,  p.  129. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    65 

the  Book  of  Joshua,  the  supplement  and  appendix 
of  the  Pentateuch,  is  a  composite  document  with 
conflicting  accounts  of  the  conquest  and  settle- 
ment of  Canaan  .1 

Beyond  the  Hexateuch  there  is  little  necessity 
to  follow  the  critics  in  their  attitude  to  archae- 
ology.     The    critics    cannot    be   charged    with 
neglecting   the   long   series  of  Assyrian  annals 
which   bear   upon  the   history  of   the  Kings  of 
Israel   and   Judah,   from    Omri  to    Zedekiah.     I 
need  only  point  out  how  far  these  annals  confirm 
the   critical   estimate   of   the   Books    of    Kings. 
The   earliest   Hebrews   named  on  the  Assyrian 
monuments   are   Omri   and    Ahab;    from   them 
onwards   we   have   among  others   the  names  of 
Ben-hadad,     Ahab's    Syrian    contemporary,     of 
Jehu,     Hazael,     Pekah,    Ahaz     and     Hezekiah. 
Pestilences     and     eclipses     are     recorded,    the 
tremors    of    which    vibrate    through    the    early 
prophetical  books.     We  have  an  account  of  the 
invasion  of   Palestine  by  Tiglath  Peleser,  when 
he  brought  into  contempt  the  land  of  Zebulun  and 
the  land  of  Naphtali,  by  the  way  of  the  sea  across 
Jordan,  Galilee  of  the  Gentiles ;  the  overthrow  of 
Samaria  by  Sargon ;  Sennacherib's    invasion   of 
Syria,   his    appearances    before    Jerusalem,   the 
tribute  he  exacted,  and  his  disappearance  north- 
wards.    But  criticism  has  never  doubted  those 

1  History  of  the  Hebrews,  ch.  iv. ;  see  above  in  this  Lecture, 
pp.  47  f. 

£ 


66         MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

names  or  these  facts.  It  has  recognised  that 
the  Books  of  Kings  were  compiled  from  true 
and  in  many  cases  contemporaneous  annals. 
What  critics  have  judged  to  be  late  and  pro- 
bably of  less  historic  value  has  been  certain 
narratives,  for  which  archaeology  has  no  evidence 
to  offer,  as  well  as  the  framework,  in  which 
the  editor  has  bound  the  whole  history  and 
supplied,  out  of  a  general  scheme,  a  chrono- 
logy, and,  from  the  standpoint  of  a  later  age, 
a  religious  sentence  on  each  monarch's  reign.^ 
Now,  remarkably  enough,  archaeology  has  con- 
firmed this  judgement  of  criticism  on  the  Books 
of  Kings,  so  far  as  regards  the  chronology.  For 
while  testifying  to  the  reality  of  Omri,  Ahab, 
Jehu,  and  some  of  their  successors,  as  well  as  of 
the  leading  events  of  the  history,  it  has  shown 
from  the  contemporary  Assyrian  data  that  the 
chronology,  approximately  correct  so  far  as  the 
distance  of  one  man  or  event  from  another  is 
concerned,  has  been  placed  by  the  editor  from 
one  dozen  to  twenty  years  too  early  —  obviously 
in  order  to  fit  it  into  the  general  system,  adopted 
by  the  Hebrew  editors,  of  reckoning  the  years 
from  the  Exodus  to  the  fall  of  the  first  Temple 
and  the  Return  from  Exile.^ 

1  For  this  chronology  see  next  Lecture.  The  moral  and 
religious  judgements  of  each  reign  are  from  the  standpoint  of 
Deuteronomy,  which,  as  we  have  seen,  did  not  come  into  force 
in  Israel  till  621  B.C.  under  King  Josiah. 

2  See  Kampfhausen,  Chronologie  der  hebraischen  Kdnige,  1883; 
Robertson  Smith,  Prophets,  pp.  144  ff. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    67 

So  much  for  archaeology  and  its  relations  to 
criticism.  *  The  fact  is,'  as  Professor  Driver  says/ 
'  the  antagonism  which  some  writers  have  sought 
to  establish  between  criticism  and  archaeology 
is  wholly  factitious  and  unreal.  Criticism  and 
archaeology  deal  with  antiquity  from  different 
points  of  view,  and  mutually  supplement  one 
another.  Each  in  turn  supplies  what  the  other 
lacks;  and  it  is  only  by  an  entire  misunder- 
standing of  the  scope  and  limits  of  both  that 
they  can  be  brought  into  antagonism  with  one 
another.  What  is  called  **  the  witness  of  the 
monuments "  is  often  strangely  misunderstood. 
The  monuments  witness  to  nothing  which  any 
reasonable  critic  has  ever  doubted.  ...  A  great 
deal  of  the  illustration  afforded  by  the  monu- 
ments relates  to  facts  of  language,  to  ideas, 
institutions,  and  localities ;  but  these  as  a  rule 
are  of  a  permanent  nature;  and  until  they  can 
be  proved  to  be  limited  to  a  particular  age  their 
occurrence,  or  mention,  in  a  given  narrative  is 
not  evidence  that  it  possesses  the  value  of  con- 
temporary testimony.' 

The  alleged  refutation  of  criticism  by  archaeo- 
logy may  therefore  be  dismissed,  and  we  pass  to 
another  which  has  been  drawn  from  the  sphere  of 
geography.  It  is  often  maintained  that  the 
accuracy  of  the  topographical  data  on  the  Book 
of   Genesis   is   proof  of  the   truthfulness  of  the 

1  Authority  and  Archceology^  p.  150  f. 


6S         MODERN   CRITICISM  AND  THE 

narratives  in  which  they  appear.  *  But/  as  I  have 
said  elsewhere,^  *  that  a  story  accurately  reflects 
geography  does  not  necessarily  mean  that  it  is  a 
real  transcript  of  history  —  else  were  the  Book  of 
Judith  the  truest  man  ever  wrote  instead  of  being, 
what  it  is,  a  pretty  piece  of  fiction.  Many  legends 
are  wonderful  photographs  of  scenery,  and  there- 
fore let  us  at  once  admit  that  while  we  may  have 
other  reasons  for  the  historical  truth  of  the  patri- 
archal narratives,  we  cannot  prove  this  on  the 
ground  that  their  itineraries  and  place-names  are 
correct/ 

On  the  other  hand,  for  the  same  reason  — 
that  the  topography  of  Palestine  changed  so 
little  during  the  course  of  the  history  of  Israel  — 
it  will  be  obvious  that  geography  cannot  be  of 
much  use  in  the  support  of  the  critical  conclusions 
as  to  the  dates  of  the  documents.  The  only  cases 
in  which  it  can  afford  any  evidence  of  these,  are 
where  documents,  judged  by  critics  to  be  late  on 
other  grounds,  contain  geographical  names,  or 
applications  of  geographical  names,  which  are 
themselves  of  a  late  origin.  For  instance,  the 
mountains  of  Moab  are  called  in  the  Priestly 
Document,  which  recent  critics  date  after  the 
Exile,  ^/i^  mountains  of  the  Aharim.  Abarim 
means  *  the  men  or  things  on  the  other  side,'  and 
there  is  some  evidence  that  before  the  Exile  the 
name  was  applied  to  the  whole  mountain-range 

1  Historical  Geography  of  the  Holy  Land,  p.  io8. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    69 

east  of  Jordan.^  But  the  post-Exilic  writer  limited 
it  to  the  mountains  of  Moab,  because  in  his  day 
these  were  the  only  part  of  the  eastern  range 
which  was  opposite  the  shrunken  territory  of 
his  people.  Again,  it  appears  that  the  name 
Euphrates  occurs  first  in  the  writings  of  Jere- 
miah ;  2  in  the  historical  and  prophetical  books 
before  his  time  we  hear  only  of  '  the  River.'  ^ 
Now  look  at  the  documents  of  the  Hexateuch. 
In  the  Jahwist  and  Elohist,  which  critics  date 
before  Jeremiah,  the  stream  is  called  *  the  River ' ; 
in  Deuteronomy  (from  Jeremiah's  time)  and  in  the 
Priestly  Writing*  (from  the  time  of  the  Exile)  it 
is  called  Euphrates.  Such  is  the  kind  of  small 
symptoms,  which  geography  supplies,  of  the 
truth  of  the  critical  conclusions  as  to  the  date 
of  the  Hexateuchal  documents.  With  regard  to 
the  literary  analysis  of  these  documents,  the 
geographical  evidence,  though  still  not  large,  is 
quite  as  decisive.  The  same  localities  are  called 
in  the  different  documents  by  different   names, 

1  Jer.  xxii.  20,  R.  V. ;  Ezek.  xxxix.  11  (reading  with  Hitzig  and 
others  'Abarim'  for  *  Oberim ').  See  further  article 'Abarim* 
by  the  present  writer  in  the  EncyclopcBdia  Biblica. 

2  Jeremiah  xiii.  4-7. 

3  2  Sam.  viii.  3  (Kethibh),  x.  16 ;  i  Kings  iv.  21,  24  (Heb.  v.  i, 
4),  xiv.  15;  Isa.  vii.  20;  and  even  Jer.  ii.  18,  and  Micah  vii.  12. 

*  '  The  River/  Gen.  xxxi.  21  (J.  E.) ;  Exod.  xxiii.  31 ;  Num. 
xxii.  5 ;  Josh.  xxiv.  2  f.  (all  E.).  '  The  great  River,  the  River 
Euphrates,'  Gen.  xv.  18  (D.)  (Red,  according  to  Ball);  Deut.  i. 
7;  Josh.  i.  4  (D.) ;  cf.  Deut.  xi.  24;  'Euphrates,'  Gen.  ii.  14 
(P.) ;  cf.  Jer.  xlvi.  2,  6,  10,  Ii.  63;  2  Kings  xxiii.  29,  xxiv.  7 ;  the 
gloss  to  2  Sara.  viii.  3  ;  and  in  Chronicles  and  Apocrypha. 


70         MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

and  this  with  a  remarkable  consistence  to  which 
there  are  but  one  or  two  exceptions.^ 

The  geographical  evidence,  then,  so  far  as 
it  goes,  does  not  contradict  but  supports  the 
critical  analysis  of  the  documents  and  the  critical 
conclusions  as  to  their  dates. 


We  have  now  examined  the  various  charges 
made  against  the  modern  criticism  of  the  Old 
Testament  and  have  found  them  baseless.  That 
criticism  does  not  depend  mainly  on  linguistic 
analysis,  but  still  more  on  historical  evidence 
furnished  by  the  Old  Testament  itself :  the  con- 

1  E.g.  for  instance  in  the  Jahwist  and  Priestly  Documents  the 
mountain  of  the  Law  is  always  Sinai,  but  in  the  Elohist  and 
Deuteronomist  always  Horeb,  as  it  is  also  in  a  narrative  of 
I  Kings,  ch.  xix.,  which  is  from  the  northern  kingdom  like 
the  Elohist ;  and  in  Mai.  iv.  2,  in  which  prophet  the  influence  of 
Deuteronomy  is  often  felt.  Notice  that  Deuteronomy  xxxiii.  2, 
in  which  Sinai  occurs,  is  assigned  on  other  grounds  to  the  Jahwist. 
Again,  the  mountain  which  Moses  ascended  in  Moab  is  called 
Pisgah  by  the  Elohist  (Num.  xxi.  20,  xxiii.  14),  and  by  the  Deu- 
teronomist (Deut.  iii.  17,  27,  iv.  49,  xxxiv.  i  (?),  Josh.  xii.  3). 
Once  perhaps  the  Priestly  Writer  uses  the  name  (Josh.  xiii.  20), 
but  this  instance  may  be  Deuteronomic.  The  Priestly  Writer 
names  it  Nebo.  Again,  the  glen  beneath  Pisgah,  in  which  Israel 
camped,  before  descending  into  the  valley  of  the  Jordan,  is 
called  the  glen  that  is  in  the  field  of  Moab  by  the  Elohist  (Num. 
xxi.  20),  but  in  the  Deuteronomist  the  glen  that  is  opposite  Beth, 
peor  (Deut.  iii.  29,  iv.  46,  xxxiv.  6).  The  Elohist  calls  the  site 
of  Israel's  camp  before  crossing  the  Jordan  the  field  or  territory  of 
Moab  (Num.  xxi.  20),  but  the  Priestly  Writer  always  speaks  of 
it  as  t\\e  plains  or  steppes  of  Moab.  Again,  the  Elohist  gives  one 
list  of  stations  on  Israel's  route  through  Moab  (Num.  xxi.  13-20), 
the  Priestly  Writer  gives  another  (Num.  xxxiii.  44-49). 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT     71 

elusions  are  not  refuted,  but  to  a  remarkable 
extent  corroborated,  by  the  evidence  of  archae- 
ology and  geography.  We  have  examined  the 
methods  and  the  general  course  of  criticism. 
We  have  seen  how  thoroughly  tested  and  how 
firmly  based  are  its  main  results.  But  in  truth 
no  general  account  of  the  critical  movement  can 
do  justice  to  its  argument.  In  the  case  of  the 
Hexateuch  we  must  take  the  text  itself  and 
prove  the  critical  analysis  verse  by  verse.  If 
we  do  so,  we  shall  often  indeed  be  puzzled  by 
details,  for  which  there  is  no  complete  explana- 
tion on  any  theory  whatsoever.  But  gradually 
the  characteristic  phraseology,  favourite  interests, 
rehgious  conceptions  and  historical  traditions  of 
four  main  documents  will  fall  apart,  all  the  more 
distinct  that  they  often  present  the  same  sub- 
jects or  events  in  different  ways;  and  we  shall 
be  convinced  that  we  are  in  touch,  not  with 
phantasms  of  modern  scholarship,  but  with  an- 
cient realities  —  the  original  constituents  of  our 
curiously  composite  Scriptures.  Discrepancies, 
fatal  to  the  traditional  theory,  will  explain  them- 
selves :  the  history,  instead  of  being  full  of  con- 
tradictions, will  fall  into  the  lines  of  a  reasonable 
development,  and  the  Divine  education  of  Israel 
become  more  apparent  than  ever.  The  other 
subject  of  criticism  —  the  exact  dates  of  the 
different  documents,  in  the  form  in  which  we 
have  them  —  may  not  be  so  clear  to  us:  we  will 


72         MODERN   CRITICISM  AND   THE 

sympathise  with  the  difference  of  opinion  about 
these  that  exists  among  critics  themselves;  and 
we  will  even  keep  in  mind  what  some  critics 
forget,  that  having  fastened  the  present  form  of 
a  document  to  an  approximate  date,  we  have 
not  therefore  prejudiced  the  question  of  the 
earlier  origin  of  some  of  its  contents. 

Reviewing  the  whole  of  this  Lecture,  we 
may  say  that  Modern  Criticism  has  won  its 
war  against  the  Traditional  Theories.  It  only 
remains  to  fix  the  amount  of  the  indemnity. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    73 


LECTURE   III 

THE  HISTORICAL  BASIS  IN  THE  OLD 
TESTAMENT 

In  last  Lecture  I  said  that  the  battle  of  modern 
criticism  with  the  traditional  theories  of  the  Old 
Testament  had  been  fought  and  won;  and  that 
it  only  remains  to  discuss  the  indemnity.  What 
do  the  results  of  criticism  cost?  To  this  question 
we  must  now  address  ourselves. 

We  have  admitted  the  liberty  and  duty  of 
criticism.  We  have  found  its  methods  reasonable 
and  carefully  wrought.  We  have  seen  that  its 
main  conclusions  rest  upon  literary  and  historical 
facts  furnished  by  the  Old  Testament  itself,  and 
are  supported  by  the  evidences  of  archaeology 
and  geography,  so  far  as  these  go :  that,  in  short, 
they  are  as  solid  as  the  results  can  be  of  a  science 
at  work  upon  so  remote  a  period  of  history. 
We  have  now  to  ask,  what  does  criticism  leave 
to  us  in  the  Old  Testament:  how  much  true 
history  and  how  much  Divine  Revelation  ?  Of 
these  two  questions  the  chief,  of  course,  is  the 
latter,  but  as  the  answer  to  it  partly  depends  on 


74         MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

the  answer  to  the  former  we  must  take  that  first; 
how  much  true  history  has  criticism  left  to  us  in 
the  Old  Testament  ? 

Though  this  is  actually  the  less  important  of 
the  two  questions  (for  Revelation  is  not  coincident 
with  actual  history^),  I  suspect  that  it  is  the  one 
which  the  preacher  or  teacher  of  to-day  finds  the 
more  urgent  and  embarrassing.  He  remembers 
how  through  the  Old  Testament  our  fathers 
pursued  their  expositions  and  homilies,  un- 
hampered by  any  doubt  of  the  events  or  per- 
sonalities which  they  encountered.  To  them 
men  behaved  and  spoke  exactly  as  the  sacred 
text  describes.  And  hence,  he  will  say,  sprang 
not  only  the  dramatic  power  of  the  best  preaching 
from  the  Old  Testament,  but  the  greater  part  of 
its  spiritual  influence.  Let  us  put  aside  in  the 
meantime  the  cardinal  facts  of  Israel's  national 
history,  whether  what  we  call  miraculous  or  not, 
for  on  these  the  greatest  Christian  preachers  did 
not  linger,  and  let  us  take  the  inimitable  por- 
traiture which  the  Old  Testament  contains. 
From  the  time  of  the  author  of  the  Epistle  to 
the  Hebrews  onwards  to  the  generation  before  our 
own,  it  has  been  among  the  personal  characters 
of  Israel's  history  that  the  greatest  preachers  in 
the  English  language  have  found  much  of  their 
richest  material  and  strongest  inspiration.  Men 
of  such  various  schools  as  Sterne  —  for  the  author 

1  See  below,  p.  89,  and  in  Lecture  viii.  on  Job. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT     75 

of  Tristram  Shandy  was  also  among  the  pro- 
phets—  Butler,  Foster,  Maurice,  Kingsley,  New- 
man, Robertson  of  Brighton,  Candlish,  Arnot, 
Spurgeon,  and  Beecher,  have  all  used  the  Old 
Testament  chiefly  for  its  characters.  Who  does 
not  remember  how  searching  Butler  is  upon 
Balaam,  and  how  impressive  Newman  is  upon 
Saul !  Some  of  Sterne's  sermons,  which  Jie 
characteristically  offers  to  his  fashionable  sub- 
scribers as  a  few  reflections  on  the  present  state 
of  society  —  and,  by  the  way,  Sterne's  sermons 
are  worth  reading  for  their  unconventional  style 
and  frequent  fitness  of  phrase  —  are  clever  ex- 
posures of  the  weaknesses  of  that  human  nature 
which  patriarchs,  prophets  and  kings  shared 
with  ourselves.  Robertson  of  Brighton,  whose 
strong  moral  sense  and  power  of  analysis  found 
full  scope  in  the  Old  Testament,  was  busy  with 
its  dramas  of  character  to  trace  the  endlessness 
of  sin  and  to  illustrate  how  the  Divine  forgiveness 
does  not  necessarily  remove  the  earthly  conse- 
quences of  human  crime.  So  with  a  host  of 
other  men.  It  was,  I  say,  not  the  miracles  of 
Old  Testament  history  nor  the  national  events, 
upon  which  the  preaching  of  our  fathers  fed  and 
grew  strong,  but  the  personal  elements;  the 
development  of  character,  the  moral  struggles, 
checks,  catastrophes  and  recoveries,  in  which  so 
many  Books  of  the  Old  Testament  are  so  very 
rich. 


76         MODERN  CRITICISM  AND  THE 

'  But  we/  the  modern  preacher  may  say ;  *  how 
are  we  to  imitate  our  predecessors?  The  strong, 
confident  preaching  you  describe  was  all  achieved 
before  the  influence  of  modern  criticism  had 
y  reached  the  pulpit.  With  perhaps  some  slight 
exceptions  in  the  case  of  Maurice,  who  felt  the 
issues  raised  by  Colenso  but  was  not  greatly 
affected  by  them,  none  of  the  preachers  you 
have  named  can  be  examples  to  us  in  the  altered 
conditions  of  Old  Testament  study.  We  know 
that  doubt  has  been  cast  by  criticism  upon  large 
portions  of  the  history  to  which  these  moral 
dramas  have  been  assigned  by  the  Old  Testa- 
ment records.  We  have  heard  that  some  of  the 
stories  are  as  legendary  as  those  of  Prometheus 
and  Hercules,  and  that  many  of  the  characters 
portrayed  are  but  the  personifications  of  the 
genius  and  temper  of  the  tribes  of  which  they 
are  represented  as  the  ancestors.'  It  is  not  too 
much  to  say  that  such  considerations  have  led 
to  a  kind  of  panic  among  preachers;  and  that 
some  have  abandoned  incontinently  whole  pro- 
vinces of  their  subject,  in  which  in  days  gone 
by  the  Christian  pulpit  found  many  of  its  noblest 
themes  and  strongest  motives. 

In  this  somewhat  disorderly  retreat  from  the 
great  sources  of  our  art,  the  first  thing  to  rally 
our  minds  is  to  remember  how  small  a  portion, 
after  all,  of  the  Old  Testament  has  been  affected. 
I  shall  be  careful  in  the  following  estimate  to  go 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    77 

not  merely  to  the  limit  of  my  own  opinion  of 
what  actual  history  has  been  left  to  us,  but  as  far 
as  the  majority  of  advanced  critics  have  ventured 
within  the  last  ten  years;  because  it  is  needful 
that  the  possible  worst  should  be  clearly  defined. 
Even  then  the  amount  of  the  history  and  narra- 
tive, which  criticism  has  rendered  uncertain,  is 
by  no  means  so  great  as  is  usually  feared. 

Let  us  leave  the  Pentateuch  till  afterwards,  and 
begin  now  from  the  settlement  in  Canaan.  There 
are  few  critics  who  doubt  the  authenticity  of 
Deborah's  song,  and  none  who  refuse  to  take  it 
as  a  reliable  account  of  the  events  which  it  cele- 
brates. So  will  the  main  facts  of  Gideon's 
career,  for  the  account  of  which  more  than  one 
story  has  been  used ;  ^  the  story  of  Abimelech ;  ^ 
the  occupation  of  Laish  by  Dan,^  and  part  of  the 
tragedy  in  Benjamin.*  Except  some  eccentric  and 
unfollowed  critics,  no  one  doubts  that  with  the 
time  of  Samuel  we  at  last  enter  real  and  indubit- 
able history.  This  very  great  man's  influence  on 
Israel ;  his  genius  in  swaying  the  new  prophetic 
movement,  so  strange  to  the  sober  traditions  of 
his  own  office,  in  selecting  Saul  and  in  launching 
the  large  but  sluggish  powers  of  the  son  of  Kish 
upon  so  powerful  a  movement,  are  not  only  facts, 
but  facts  of  obvious  value  to  the  preacher.  It 
is  quite  true  (as  I  said  in  last  Lecture)  that  the 

1  Judg.  vi-ix.  2  judg.  ix. 

3  Judg.  xviii.  *  Judg.  xix-xxi. 


78         MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

Books  of  Samuel  and  Kings  are  composed  of 
narratives  of  very  various  worth.  Some  are 
plainly  of  an  age  long  subsequent  to  the  events 
they  describe;  there  has  been  time  for  later 
conceptions  to  mingle  with  the  facts  on  which 
they  are  based.  But  others  are  contemporary, 
or  nearly  contemporary,  documents,  and  in  select- 
ing these,  as  any  modern  translation  or  commen- 
tary will  enable  him  to  do,^  and  in  employing 
them,  the  preacher  may  be  as  sure  that  he  is 
dealing  with  facts  as  his  predecessors  of  a  less 
critical  age.  Nay  more,  he  will  find  that  criticism 
has  brought  him  a  certain  amount  of  relief  from 
difficulties  which  embarrassed  his  fathers  in  their 
study  and  presentation  of  the  sacred  history. 
That  relief  is  of  two  kinds,  both  of  which  I  may 
illustrate  from  the  story  of  David. 

We  who  have  reached  middle  life  can  remem- 
ber what  time  and  anxiety  the  pastors  of  our 
boyhood  used  to  expend  upon  the  double  and 
sometimes  contradictory  stories  of  David's  life  ; 
for  instance,  the  two  very  different  accounts  of 
his  first  introduction  to  Saul.  Their  attempts 
to  reconcile  these  involved  —  even  when  one 
thought  that  they  succeeded  —  so  much  intricate 
explanation  as  to  distract  them   from  the  clear 

1  Like  Kautzsch's  German  translation,  for  instance,  or  those 
in  English,  edited  by  Haupt  in  the  Sacred  Books  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment;  or  the  volumes  of  the  International  Critical  Coj?imentary, 
by  Professor  H.  P.  Smith  on  Samuel,  and  by  Professor  Francis 
Brown  on  Kings  (the  latter  not  yet  published). 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT     79 

presentation  of  the  moral  issues,  which  it  was 
their  first  duty  as  preachers  to  present  and  enforce 
to  their  people.  But  they  did  not  succeed.  The 
stories  are  irreconcileable.  What  an  advantage, 
then,  has  the  preacher  of  to-day  who  can  frankly 
say :  *  These  are  two  different  traditions  of  the 
same  event,'  and  confine  himself  to  the  rich  ma- 
terial and  moral  issues  of  the  one  or  the  other ! 

Or  take  an  instance  where  the  relief  afforded 
by  criticism  to  the  preacher  is  of  a  moral  rather 
than  of  an  intellectual  kind.  The  character  of 
David  was  one  of  the  most  complex  ever  pos- 
sessed by  man.  His  temper  was  not  only 
ambitious  and  cruel.  It  was  disfigured  by  some 
of  the  most  ferocious  traits  which  are  charac- 
teristic of  his  race ;  for  ferocity  the  Semites  have 
always  been  notorious.  But  in  the  large  heart  of 
David  there  also  stirred  emotions  of  an  opposite 
quality :  the  feeling  for  greatness  in  others,  even 
when  they  hunted  him  as  did  Saul,  whom  he 
spared,  and  on  whom,  though  Saul  had  been  his 
persecutor  and  implacable  foe,  he  wrote  the 
greatest  of  all  elegies ;  ^  his  generosity  and  quick- 
ness to  forgive,  as  in  Saul's  case  and  Shimei's  ; 
his  noble  penitence  when  his  sin  was  brought 
home  to  him ;  the  carriage  of  his  soul  in  the  days 
of  disaster;  his  chivalry  towards  the  captains 
who  brought  him  water  from  the  well  of  Beth- 
lehem at  the  risk  of  their  lives.     Criticism  finds  no 

1  See  Lecture  V.  on '  The  Spirit  of  Christ  in  the  Old  Testament.' 


8o         MODERN   CRITICISM  AND  THE 

objection  to  many  of  the  priceless  narratives  which 
have  rendered  such  virtues  immortal.  Moreover, 
it  has  cleared  the  old  age  of  David  from  a  blot 
by  which,  if  you  adhere,  with  tradition,  to  the 
truth  of  every  part  of  his  biography,  all  these 
victories  of  his  character  are  robbed  of  their 
splendour.^  You  remember  the  second  chapter  of 
First  Kings,  and  David's  charge  to  Solomon,  when 
the  days  drew  nigh  that  he  should  die :  how  he, 
a  dying  man,  commanded  his  son  not  to  let  the 
hoar  head  of  Joab,  his  lifelong  comrade  and  lieu- 
tenant, go  down  to  the  grave  in  peace ;  and,  in 
spite  of  the  oath  by  which  he  had  generously  for- 
given Shimei,  to  slay  that  spiteful  and  cowardly  per- 
son. Behold  there  is  with  thee  Shimei  son  of  Gera, 
the  Benjamite  of  Bahurim,  who  c terse d  me  with  a 
grievous  curse  in  the  day  when  I  went  to  Maha- 
naim;  hit  he  came  down  to  meet  me  at  Jordan  and 
I  sware  to  him  by  Jahweh,  saying,  I  will  not  put 
thee  to  death  with  the  sword.  Now  therefore  hold 
him  not  guiltless,  for  thou  art  a  wise  man :  and 
thou  wilt  know  what  thou  oughtest  to  do  with 
him  —  thou  shalt  bring  his  hoar  head  down  to 
the  grave  with  blood.  And  David  slept  with  his 
fathers,  and  was  buried  in  the  city  of  David. 

These  are  horrible  words  to  be  the  last  of  such 
a  life :  horrible  words  clothing  a  horrible  spirit. 
But  this  is  just  one  of  the  passages  in  David's 

1  I  Kings  ii.  esp.  2-9:  cf.  Cheyne,  Aids  to  Devout  Study  of 
Criticism,  d-}^  ff . 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    8i 

biography,  which,  upon  linguistic  and  other 
grounds,  criticism  has  taught  us  to  doubt.  It 
is  a  late  passage;  it  betrays  the  temper  as 
well  as  the  dialect  of  a  legal  school  in  Israel, 
which  enforced  the  extermination  of  the  enemies 
of  the  pious.^  We  have  much  reason,  therefore, 
to  let  it  go,  and  letting  it  go  we  remove,  from 
the  most  interesting  of  Old  Testament  stories 
of  character,  a  termination  which  saddens  every 
charm  and  blights  every  promise  revealed  by  its 
previous  progress. 

These  instances  must  suffice  for  the  reigns  of 
Saul,  David  and  Solomon,  as  recounted  in  the 
Books  of  Samuel  and  Kings.^  I  have  already 
shown  that  criticism  accepts  the  official  annals 
of  their  successors,  but  that  personal  narratives 
have  mingled  with  these,  and  that  the  religious 
judgement  passed  on  each  reign  has  been  entered 
by  an  editor  writing  from  the  later  standpoint  of 
Deuteronomy.^  Among  the  personal  narratives 
which  thus  mingle  with  the  official  annals,  the 
greatest  are  those  of  Elijah  and  Elisha. 

The   story  of  Elijah  (i    Kings  xvii.-xix.,  xxi., 

1  Verses  2-4  are  plainly,  from  their  language,  by  a  Deutero- 
nomic  Redactor,  therefore  later  than  the  seventh  century.  The 
king,  as  pictured  in  verses  5-9,  is  quite  incompatible  with  the 
picture  of  him  given  in  the  previous  chapter  ;  and  the  author  of 
the  rest  of  the  chapter,  verses  13-46,  could  not  have  known  of 
verses  5-9,  for  he  gives  other  grounds  for  the  slaughter  of  Joab. 

2  The  late  and  less  trustworthy  accounts  in  Chronicles  have 
already  been  treated.     See  Lecture  11.,  pp.  55  f. 

^  See  pp.  65  f. 

F 


82         MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

and  2  Kings  i.,  ii.),  cannot  be  much  later  than  a 
century  after  Elijah  himself.^  If  some  of  the 
colossal  elements  of  this  prophet's  fame  be 
of  posthumous  growth,  they  not  only  prove 
how  immense  the  man  and  his  work  must 
have  been,  but  they  reveal  one  of  its  chief 
qualities  and  they  do  not  disguise  the  rest. 
The  God  of  Elijah  appears  in  overwhelming 
physical  manifestations  —  as  the  Lord  of  drought 
and  famine,  of  the  cloud,  the  rain  and  the 
fire.  He  calls  his  prophet  from  the  solitudes 
of  nature  and  His  hand  makes  His  servant 
run  and  leap  before  the  King's  chariot  across 
the  whole  length  of  Esdraelon.  Such  elements 
in  the  prophet's  sympathy  are  conspicuous  in 
other  Semitic  religions  and  are  those  on  which 
the  popular  imagination  would  most  naturally 
fasten.  But  they  do  not  submerge  other  and 
higher  religious  interests.  Elijah's  jealousy  for 
his  God  is  not  accounted  for  by  explaining  the 
contest  of  his  time  as  one  between  the  nearly 
equal  religions  of  two  Semitic  tribes.  Elijah's 
zeal  is  inexplicable  unless  it  was  inspired  by  a 
conviction  of  the  unique  character  of  Jahweh; 
his  intolerance  of  foreign  deities  must  have  had 
ethical  reasons.     Such  a  conclusion  is  not  only 


1  For  the  Northern  Kingdom  from  which  it  sprang  —  (notice 
especially  how  Elijah  goes  to  seek  Jahweh  not  where  the  Judasan 
Amos  hears  his  voice  in  Jerusalem,  but  at  Horeb) — came  to  an  end 
in  721,  and  was  in  dire  trouble  by  735.    Elijah  flourished  c.  860. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    83 

in  line  with  the  general  development  of  Israel's 
religion^  and  supported  by  all  we  know  of  the 
rival  Semitic  faiths,  but  sustained  by  the  story 
itself.  According  to  this,  Elijah  enforced  the 
claims  of  Jahweh  in  independence  of  the  nation  ; 
not  only  against  the  deities  of  Phoenicia  but 
against  Ahab  and  Israel  themselves.  He  pre- 
dicted the  employment  of  a  foreign  nation  by 
Jahweh  to  punish  His  own  people.  Finally,  he 
defended  the  rights  of  the  common  man  against 
the  avarice  of  the  king.  The  religious  interest  of 
the  narrative  is  of  supreme  significance.  It  is 
the  emphasis,  by  one  who  felt  all  the  physical 
wonder  and  force  of  the  deity,  of  the  indis- 
pensable ethical  in  religion.  The  former  was 
common  to  all  the  Semitic  religions  ;  the  latter 
was  the  character  of  Israel's  God  alone.  No 
one  therefore  can  doubt  the  historical  reahty  of 
Elijah  or  the  quality  of  that  service  which 
stamped  him  as  the  greatest  prophet  since 
Moses.  Elijah  was  great  enough  to  combine 
the  physical  and  ethical  significance  of  the 
Godhead.  But  he  is  represented  as  arriving 
only  gradually  at  the  full  meaning  of  his  mes- 
sage, and  learning,  through  doubt  and  pain, 
that  the  ethical  is  the  greater.^  From  this, 
too,  we  may  infer  the  essentially  historical 
value  of  his  story :  it  is  further  supported  by 
the   saying   attributed   to   him,   How   long  will 

1  See  next  Lecture.  ^  Chap.  xix. 


84         MODERN   CRITICISM  AND   THE 

ye  limp  between  two  opinions ^  and  his  sarcasms 
upon  the  Phoenician  myths  of  Baal.^  We  would 
be  foolish,  indeed,  to  doubt  the  originality  of 
these.  For  the  rest,  there  is  not  a  single  feature 
in  the  story  which  can  be  identified  as  late,  or 
which  does  not  reflect,  in  some  way,  the  re- 
ligious conditions  of  Elijah's  time. 

No  school  of  criticism  denies  the  reality  of 
Elisha,  or  of  his  services  to  Israel  in  the 
disastrous  days  of  the  border  wars  with  the 
Arameans  and  their  raids  up  to  the  very  walls 
of  the  capital.  It  was  his  ceaseless  vigilance 
upon  the  enemy,  his  unbroken  hope  for  his 
people  through  their  worst  defeats,  which  won 
for  the  aged  prophet  from  his  king  the  high 
name  of  the  Chariot  of  Israel  and  the  Horsemen 
thereof?  But  it  would  be  equally  impossible  to 
prove  the  historical  reality  of  the  series  of 
curious  marvels  attributed  to  Elisha  from  sources 
outside  the  annals  of  the  Kings  of  Israel. 
These,  however,  are  practically  of  no  importance 
to  the  Christian  preacher. 

Such  instances  must  suffice  for  the  period  of 
Israel's  history  from  Samuel  to  the  eve  of  the 
great  prophets  of  the  eighth  century.  From 
this  onwards,  the  student  of  Scripture  traverses 

1  xviii.  27. 

2  2  Kings  xiii.  14.  Some  critics  have  suggested  that  the  name 
is  a  mere  imitation  of  that  already  bestowed  upon  Elijah;  but 
Elisha's  services  were  such  that  more  probably  it  was  original  in 
his  case. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    85 

ground  still  more  certain.  The  exceptions  are 
trifling  so  long  as  we  keep  to  the  Books  of 
Kings  and  the  Prophets.  Consider  how  all  else 
lies  before  us  unquestioned  by  criticism.  Un- 
questioned ?  I  should  rather  say  fortified,  ex- 
plored, illuminated,  made  habitable  for  modern 
men.  The  labours  of  the  prophets,  the  doom 
and  fall  of  Northern  Israel,  the  carriage  of  Jeru- 
salem through  her  awful  crisis  upon  the  solitary 
faith  of  Isaiah;  his  victory;  the  reaction  under 
Manasseh,  and  the  recrudescence  of  heathen- 
ism ;  the  discovery  of  Deuteronomy  and  the 
reforms  of  Josiah ;  ^  the  confidence  of  the  people 
in  an  external  righteousness  and  their  disillusion- 
ment by  Josiah's  tragic  death  at  Megiddo;  the 
second  reaction  to  heathenism  under  Jehoiakim ; 
the  story  of  Judah's  decline  and  fall;  the  story 
of  the  Exile  and  of  the  Return ;  ^  the  brilliant 
hopes  and  their  disappointment;  the  struggle, 
with  foreign  tyrants  and  native  traitors,  for  the 
nation's  purity  and  loyalty  to  God;  the  growth 
of  legalism  and  of  the  sweet  personal  piety 
which  grew  behind  the  Law  like  a  garden  of 
lilies  within  a  hedge  of  thorns;  the  story  of 
the  Diaspora  and  of  contact  with  alien  systems 
of  culture  and  religion;   the  story  of  righteous 


1  On  the  exact  amount  of  these  consult  a  good  commentary 
on  Kings. 

2  On  the  exact  nature  of  this  and  the  questions  which  still 
divide  critics,  see  Book  of  the  Twelve  Prophets^  vol.  ii.  chap.  xvi. 


86         MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

suffering  in  meditation  upon  its  meaning;  the 
rise  of  speculation  and  of  the  schools  of  teachers, 
who  applied  the  fear  of  Jahweh  and  the  wisdom 
which  springs  from  it  to  the  everyday  life  of 
men.  No  historical  criticism  can  take  away 
these  fields  from  the  preacher  of  to-day.  Across 
them  he  may  move  with  all  the  confidence  and 
boldness  of  the  fathers  —  nay,  with  more  fresh- 
ness, more  insight,  more  agility,  for  the  text  is 
clearer,  the  discrepancies  explained,  the  allusions 
better  understood,  and  all  the  old  life  re- 
quickened  out  of  which  those  prophets  and 
reformers,  those  psalmists  and  wise  men,  with 
all  their  Hterature,  originally  sprang. 

Before  we  go  back  to  the  Hexateuch  there 
are  two  questions  about  the  historical  character 
of  portions  of  the  literature  which  we  have  been 
surveying  that  demand  some  special  notice  — 
the  authorship  of  the  Psalms  and  the  character 
of  the  Book  of  Jonah. 

On  the  former  of  these  this  is  not  the  place 
to  go  into  details.  But  I  may  say  summarily, 
that  while  it  is  impossible  to  conceive  of  so 
mobile  and  vibrant  a  heart  as  David's,  so  bold 
and  musical  a  skill,  as  never  stirred  to  the 
praise  of  his  nation's  God  in  an  age  when  the 
secular  and  the  religious  were  one;  and  while 
the  King's  fame  as  the  father  of  sacred  min- 
strelsy appears  inexplicable  unless  he  actually 
composed  some  hymns ;  yet  recent  criticism  has 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    87 

tended  to  confirm  the  impossibility  of  proving 
any  given  psalm  in  our  Psalter  to  have  been  by 
David.^  *The  Psalter  is  the  hymn-book  of 
the  second  Temple '  at  least  five  hundred  years 
after  David  passed  away.  No  reliance  can  be 
placed  upon  the  titles  which  its  editors  have 
prefixed  to  individual  psalms.^  And  although 
it  is  possible,  and  I  think  on  the  whole  certain, 
that  the  Psalter  contains  pre-Exilic  elements  — 
for  it  is  hardly  conceivable  that  lyrical  expres- 
sions of  the  teaching  of  the  great  prophets 
were  not  preserved  in  Israel — yet,  like  all  other 
religious  poetry,  that  of  Israel  suffered  such 
changes  in  its  tradition  and  in  its  adaptation  to 
use  in  public  worship,  that  we  cannot  with  any 
certainty  trace  its  various  constituents  to  their 
personal  origins. 

But  if  such  conclusions  be  inevitable,  does  the 
religious  value  of  the  Psalter  suffer  from  them? 
I  venture,  from  practical  experience,  to  think  that 
it  does  not.  The  criticism  of  the  Psalms  may 
rob  the  preacher  of  the  right  to  use  many  of  the 

1  See  Robertson  Smith,  Old  Testament  in  the  Jewish  Chnrch^y\\. 

2  Some  of  them,  like  that  of  the  52nd,  are  so  plainly  unsuit- 
able to  the  verses  below  them  as  to  throw  discredit  on  the  rest; 
and  as  a  matter  of  fact  we  know,  from  the  titles  given  to  the  con- 
cluding Psalms  in  the  Greek  version  but  not  found  in  the  Hebrew, 
that  the  manufacture  of  titles  was  a  process  always  going  on,  even 
after  the  Hebrew  Canon  closed,  and  based  on  pure  conjecture. 
For  a  discussion  of  the  whole  subject  see  Robertson  Smith,  op. 
cit.;  Cheyne,  The  Origin  of  the  Psalter  \  Driver's  Introduction,^ 
chap.  vii. ;  and  on  the  other  side  Robertson's  Poetry  and  Religion, 
of  the  Psalms:  Edinburgh,  1898. 


88         MODERN   CRITICISM   AND  THE 

incidents  and  personal  experiences  which  have 
lent  picturesqueness  to  his  preaching.  But,  after 
all,  much  of  this  is  the  mere  confectionery  of  the 
pulpit,  fit  only  to  spoil  the  appetite  of  the  hearers 
for  the  sincere  milk  of  the  word.  No  denial  of 
Psalms  to  David  or  to  Moses  can  diminish  their 
spiritual  value  as  authentic  expressions  of  the 
human  spirit  on  every  level  and  under  every 
shadow  of  the  Church's  experience.  The  detach- 
ment of  the  Psalms  from  this  or  that  famous 
figure  in  Israel's  history  will  only  leave  us  the 
more  free  to  appreciate  their  essential  and  un- 
mitigated humanity,  under  the  influence  of  God's 
Spirit.  This  is  true  even  of  such  a  Psalm  as 
the  Fifty-first.  There  is  every  reason  to  believe 
the  Psalm  to  be  Exilic.^  Further,  it  is  not  the 
acknowledgment  by  a  single  individual  of  an 
extraordinary  and  revolting  crime  against  some 
fellow-creature,  but  the  confession,  on  behalf 
of  the  whole  Church,  of  her  inherent  sinfulness 
before  God,  and  of  her  neglect  of  her  mission  to 
the  world.2     I  do  not  ask  you  to  accept  this  view 

1  The  last  two  verses  plainly  fix  the  composition  of  the  Psalm 
in  the  days  before  sacrifices  had  been  resumed  on  the  Temple 
altar  and  the  walls  of  Jerusalem  were  still  unbuilt.  For  the  proof 
that  these  verses  are  from  the  same  author  as  those  which  precede 
them  see  Cheyne,  Origin  of  the  Psalter ;  Robertson  Smith,  The 
Old  Testament  i7i  the  Jewish  Church,  pp.  44o£f. ;  and  compare 
The  Book  of  the  Twelve  Prophets,  pp.  276  ff. 

2  Verse  4,  '  Against  Thee,  Thee  only  have  I  sinned  and  done 
this  e7'il  in  Thy  sight,'  could  hardly  be  said  by  David  of  his  crime 
against  his  fellow-man  and  woman  (cf.  also  verse  3).  It  is  suitable 
to  the  lips  of  the  Exilic  Church,  who  were  suffering  in  Babylon 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    89 

of  the  authorship  and  meaning  of  the  Psalm.  I 
only  desire  you  to  perceive  that  it  does  not  lessen 
the  religious  value  of  the  Psalm  to  the  preacher 
or  to  his  people. 

The  Book  of  Jonah  raises  a  larger  question  than 
those  of  its  own  interpretation,  but  this  is  an- 
swered for  us  by  Christ  Himself.  I  said  above  that 
Revelation  is  not  coincident  with  actual  history. 
Christ  has  shown  this  by  His  parables ;  and  the 
only  view  of  the  story  of  Jonah,  which  does  justice 
to  its  teaching  and  explains  its  place  in  a  Book 
of  prophetic  discourses,  is  that  which  treats  it  not 
as  real  history  but  as  a  sermon,  in  the  form  of 
a  parable,  upon  the  great  evangelical  truth,  that 
God  has  granted  to  the  Gentiles  also  repentance 
unto  life.  This  I  have  elsewhere  sufficiently 
proved  and  illustrated.^ 

There  still  remains  the  most  difficult  part  of 
our  present  task  —  the  Hexateuch.  We  all  know 
that,  from  the  time  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews 
to  the  present  day,  the  strong  preaching  from 
the  Old  Testament,  of  which  I  have  spoken,  has 
understood  the  narratives  of  the  Pentateuch  as 
actual  history.  How  has  criticism  affected  our 
materials  here  } 

not  because  of  their  sins  against  that  Empire/but  because  of  their 
sins  against  God.  For  the  use  of  verse  5  by  the  Church,  and  not 
by  an  individual,  cf.  Isaiah  Ixiii.  16  and  John  viii.  33  ff.  For  the 
meaning  of  bloodguiltiness  in  verse  14^  see  its  contrast  in  13,  i^b 
and  15,  the  Church's  duty  of  declaring  God  to  sinners;  and  cf. 
Ezekiel  iii.  18  ff. 

1  Book  ojthe  Twelve  Prophets^  vol.  ii.,  chaps,  xxxiv.-xxxviii. 


90         MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

I  propose  to  take  the  Book  of  Genesis,  and 
to  examine  first  the  part  which  opens  with  the 
Creation  and  Fall  of  Man  in  the  second  chapter 
and  closes  in  the  eleventh  just  before  the  call  of 
Abraham. 

Here  it  is  obvious  that  we  do  not  have  a  tran- 
script of  actual  history,  in  the  narrower  sense 
of  that  word.  This  need  scarcely  be  argued,  but 
we  may  take  two  points  in  illustration  of  it.  The 
Book  of  Genesis,  by  a  careful  chronology,  carries 
the  human  family  back  by  named  generations  to 
the  creation  of  the  first  man,  in  4219  b.c,  or  — 
according  to  the  Greek  version  which  makes 
the  ages  of  the  Patriarchs  much  greater  at  the 
birth  of  their  sons  than  the  Hebrew  does  —  to 
5408.  But  recent  discoveries,  in  Babylonia  and 
Egypt  —  the  first  of  which  we  owe  to  American 
and  the  second  to  British  labours  —  prove  that  in 
both  of  these  great  river-valleys  man  lived  and 
had  already  developed  considerable  culture  at  a 
date  long  anterior  to  that  assigned  to  his  creation 
by  the  Book  of  Genesis.^     Again,  the  Book  of 

1  The  antiquity  of  human  civilisation  may  not  be  so  great  as 
some  Assyriologists  calculate,  but  on  the  very  lowest  reckoning  it 
preceded  both  of  the  Biblical  dates  for  the  Creation.  An  inscrip- 
tion of  the  Babylonian  King  Nabonidus,  c.  550  B.C.,  states  that 
he  restored  the  temple  of  Naram-Sin,  built  3200  years  previously, 
which  would  fix  the  date  of  Naram-Sin  at  3750  B.C.,  and  this  is 
generally  accepted  by  Assyriologists,  who  have  not  only  found  in- 
scriptions of  Sargon  I.,  father  of  Naram-Sin,  but  inscriptions  of  his 
predecessors  who,  from  the  more  primitive  character  of  their  writ- 
ings, must  have  reigned  about  500  years  earlier,  or  say  4200,  and 
who  had  even  then  reached  a  stage  of  civilisation  requiring  many 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    91 

Genesis  fixes  the  building  of  the  Tower  of  Babel 
in  2564  B.C.,  or,  if  we  take  the  Greek  data,  in  3166, 
and  asserts  that  till  then  the  whole  earth  was 
of  one  language  and  of  one  speech.  Yet  we  have 
discovered  inscriptions  in  three  languages,  of 
different  families,  Sumerian,  Babylonian  and 
Egyptian,  which  are  all  earlier  than  either  of 
these  dates.^  Clearly  then,  on  this  ground  of 
chronology  alone,  we  cannot  regard  the  early 
chapters  of  Genesis  as  actual  history. 

In  support  of  this  conclusion,  archaeology  pro- 
vides us  with  further  evidence.  In  Babylonian 
literature  there  are  traditions  of  the  origin  of 
man,  of  Paradise  and  of  the  Flood,  which  bear, 
even  in  their  details,  a  remarkable  resemblance 
to  the  account  of  the  same  subjects  in  Genesis 
i.-ix.  Critics  are  now  generally  agreed  that  the 
traditions  reached  Israel  at  an  early  age,  and  that, 

previous  centuries  for  its  development.  The  *  3200  years,'  how- 
ever, of  Nabonidus'  inscription  is  a  suspiciously  '  round '  number. 
It  is  a  multiple  of  forty,  a  usual  Semitic  reckoning  for  a  genera- 
tion ;  eighty  forties.  If  we  take  it  as  eighty  generations  and  adopt 
the  juster  calculation  of  thirty-three  years  for  a  generation,  this 
would  give  us  instead  of  3200  years  only  2640;  which  would  fix 
Naram-Sin's  date,  instead  of  at  3750,  at  3190  B.C.  Now,  no  Baby- 
lonian sovereigns  have  yet  been  discovered  between  2900  and  the 
relics  of  Naram-Sin.  The  later  date  for  him  is  therefore  not  im- 
probable. But  even  if  we  accept  it,  the  beginnings  of  civilisation 
in  Mesopotamia  can  hardly  be  placed  after  either  of  the  Biblical 
dates  of  the  Creation.  —  The  inscription  of  Nabonidus  is  in  the 
British  Museum,  No.  91,  109;  see  Guide  to  the  Bab.  and  Assyr. 
Room,  pp.  171  f.  and  PI.  xxx.  Further  see  The  Babyl.  Expedition 
of  the  Univ.  of  Pennsylvania  (1893,  etc.),  ed.  by  Hilprecht. 
1  See  more  fully  Driver,  Authority  etc.,  p.  34. 


92         MODERN   CRITICISM   AND    THE 

along  with  other  elements  of  Babylonian  legend 
and  mythology,  they  underwent  considerable 
modification  and  gradually  became,  when  perhaps 
all  memory  of  their  true  origin  was  lost,  part  of 
the  folk-lore  of  Canaan.  The  process  probably 
extended  through  many  centuries  before  the 
authors  of  these  chapters  of  Genesis  used  them 
for  a  higher  purpose.  But  this  absence  of  his- 
tory from  the  chapters,  this  fact  that  their  frame- 
work is  woven  from  the  raw  material  of  myth 
and  legend,  cannot  discredit  the  profound  moral 
and  religious  truths  with  which  they  are  charged, 
any  more  than  the  cosmogony  of  his  time,  which 
Milton  employs,  impairs  by  one  whit  our  spiritual 
indebtedness  to  Paradise  Lost, 

Nor  (it  is  hardly  necessary  to  add)  does  the 
legendary  character  of  these  stories  altogether 
destroy  their  historical  value.  Anthropologists 
are  of  opinion  that  many  of  the  legends  and 
superstitions  of  a  people  spring  from  recollec- 
tions of  tribes  who  preceded  them  in  the  occupa- 
tion of  the  land,  and  who  either  disappeared  in 
some  great  catastrophe,  or,  before  dying  out, 
struggled  for  a  time  furtively  and  mysteriously 
in  wilder  parts  of  their  ancient  domain.  Such 
recollections  of  early  races  appear  to  underlie 
the  genealogies  and  primitive  civilisations  de- 
scribed in  the  first  eleven  chapters  of  Genesis; 
and  they  are  still  more  apparent  in  the  rest  of 
the   Hexateuch:    in    Israel's    traditions    of   the 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    93 

aboriginal  tribes   of  Canaan  and  of  the  earliest 
adventures  of  the  families  of  Jacob. 

Whatever  may  have  been  the  historical  and 
literary  origins  of  the  narratives  in  Genesis  of 
primaeval  man,  their  ethical  value  to  the  preacher 
is  beyond  all  question.  Look  at  the  grandness 
of  the  conception  which  dominates  and  employs 
them.  The  Epic  of  Humanity  in  which  they  are 
arranged  begins  with  a  vision  of  creation.  It 
traces  the  Divine  purpose  from  the  making  of 
man.  It  follows  man  from  the  dawn  of  the 
moral  sense  through  the  elementary  conflict  of 
passion  with  conscience,  the  growth  of  knowledge, 
the  necessity  of  labour,  the  beginnings  of  crime, 
the  rise  of  civilisation,  the  separation  of  the 
peoples,  the  emergence  at  last  of  a  chosen 
people  —  chosen,  be  it  observed,  not  for  their  own 
salvation  or  their  own  glory  but,  as  the  epic 
affirms,  in  order  that  in  them  all  families  of 
mankind  may  be  blessed. 

Nor  is  this  great  epic  only  thus  colossal  in 
conception.  In  insight  it  is  equally  profound. 
I  need  not  speak  of  the  absence  of  national 
narrowness  from  its  account  of  the  origin  of  the 
race.  Man  is  treated  as  man ;  the  great  human 
experiences  of  temptation  and  guilt,  of  desire 
and  labour  and  death,  are  brought  before  us  with 
a  simplicity  which  too  often  hides  from  us  the 
depth  and  volume  of  their  truth.  Take  the  prose 
poem  of  the  Fall  of  Man  in  Paradise.     It  is  usual 


94         MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

to  call  the  morality  of  early  Israel  a  purely  tribal 
morality  like  that  of  all  their  Semitic  kinsfolk. 
But  the  nation  which  produced  this  story  almost 
certainly  before  700  b.c,  had  already  within  it 
minds  far  advanced  beyond  the  stage  of  a  tribal 
morality.^  The  man  who  composed  the  third 
chapter  of  Genesis  was  not  the  simple  scribe  of 
some  early  traditions  at  which,  in  our  superior 
wisdom,  we  can  smile  as  at  a  story  for  children. 
He  was  the  acute  and  faithful  reader  of  his  own 
heart,  and,  from  whatever  source  you  believe  his 
inspiration  to  have  been  derived,  you  cannot 
gainsay  the  essential  truthfulness  of  his  account 
He  had  grasped  the  relation  of  God  to  the  indi- 
vidual, he  was  expert  in  the  heart's  experience  of 
temptation:  the  mysterious  connection  between 
knowledge  and  the  boldness  to  sin ;  the  workings 
of  conscience;  the  relation  of  guilt,  if  not  to 
death,  yet  to  the  terror  and  curse  of  death. 
After  all  the  centuries  of  man's  acquaintance 
with  himself,  after  all  the  analyses  of  philosophy 
and  ethics,  we  have  hardly  reached  deeper  than 
this  ancient  examination  of  the  mysteries  and 
complications  of  the  human  heart. 

But  go  a  little  further  in  this  epic  and  you 
discover  traces  of  a  remarkable  conception  of 
history.  Evil  is  followed  out  of  the  individual 
heart  to  its  effects  on  the  family,  on  the  state 
and  on  civilisation.     The  Fall  of  the  Man  in  the 

1  See  below,  next  Lecture,  pp.  133  ff. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    95 

garden  is  not  the  only  Fall  in  the  Book  of  Genesis, 
and  every  one  of  the  others  is  traced  to  a  similar 
source :  the  increase  of  knowledge  and  of  power 
unaccompanied  by  reverence ;  the  opening  of  the 
eyes  to  the  desirable  things  of  life  which  gradually 
come  within  reach  of  us  all  as  the  apple  came 
within  the  reach  of  Eve.  We  have  this  presented 
to  us  in  the  form  of  several  laborious  cycles  of 
progress,  each  ending  in  a  colossal  catastrophe. 
One  of  them  relates  the  increase  of  mankind 
in  numbers,  their  progress  in  intellectual  and 
national  power,  their  stagnancy  in  hate  and  the 
desire  for  vengeance.^  Another  tells  us  how 
men  multiplied,  how  the  pride  and  beauty  of  the 
race  wedded  with  the  sons  of  God,  and  wicked- 
ness became  so  great  that  God  resolved  to 
destroy  man  from  the  face  of  the  earth. '^  Another 
describes  the  rise  of  architecture.  Men  settle  in 
Shinar,  they  build  cities,  their  art  and  their  power 
increase,  but  their  pride  and  impiety  also,  till 
God  comes  down  and  confounds  the  colossal  and 
irreverent  ambition  of  their  works.^  All  three 
stories  contain  much  legendary  material  from 
several  different  sources.  Their  authors  have 
also  been  unable  to  throw  off  that  fear  of  God, 
which  is  cast  out  only  by  the  perfect  love  taught 
by  Christ,  and  under  which  Pagan  races  have 
ever  imagined  the  Deity  to  be  jealous  of  the 
intellectual   and    material   achievements   of    His 

1  Gen.  iv.  2  Gen.  vi.  ff.  ^  Gen.  xi. 


96         MODERN   CRITICISM  AND  THE 

creatures.  Yet  in  all  the  greater  relief  that  they 
lie  beneath  so  sombre  a  heaven,  the  noble  and 
permanent  lessons  of  the  inspired  author  stand 
forth:  that  human  genius  and  human  wealth,  if 
not  accompanied  by  faith  and  obedience  to  God, 
mean  the  development  of  a  fatal  pride,  whose 
end  is  the  destruction  of  many  individuals  and 
the  retardation  of  all  human  progress.  Has  this 
no  inspiration  for  the  modern  preacher. J'  Does 
it  not  present  a  truth  conspicuously  absent  from 
some  theories  of  evolution  which  inspire  so  much 
of  the  hopefulness  and  the  pride  of  modern  man  ? 
—  the  truth,  namely,  that  no  evolution  is  stable 
which  neglects  the  moral  factor,  or  seeks  to  shake 
itself  free  from  the  eternal  duties  of  obedience 
and  of  faith.  Take  the  story  which  ends  in  the 
-  Song  of  Lamech  in  the  fourth  chapter.  Cain  has 
gone  forth  from  the  presence  of  God  to  the  Land 
of  Nod.  From  this  first  emigrant  spring  the 
civiHsations.  His  eldest  son  founds  a  city.  A 
later  descendant,  Lamech,  has  two  wives,  Adah 
and  Zillah,  names  which  probably  mean  Light 
and  SJiadoiVy  and  from  them  are  born  Jabal,  the 
father  of  all  who  dwell  in  tents;  Jubal,  the 
father  of  such  as  handle  harp  and  pipe;  and 
Tubal-Qain,  the  wielder  or  forger  of  all  instru- 
ments of  copper  and  iron.  And  these  three, 
the  father  of  the  Pastoral  Life,  the  Maker  of 
Music,  and  the  Forger  of  Weapons,  have  a  sister 
Na'amah,^r^^/(??/^  or  beatitiful,  whom  later  Jewish 
legend  calls  the  mother  of  singing. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    97 

Now,  how  does  the  Song  of  Lamech  greet  all 
this  progress  of  the  equipment  and  adorning 
of  human  life?  With  an  outburst  of  praise  to 
God,  the  giver?  With  some  apostrophe  to  man's 
power  and  skill?  With  thankful  notes  for  the 
peace  of  the  pastoral  life  defended  by  weapons 
from  its  foes  ?  With  none  of  these ;  but  with  a 
savage  exultation  in  the  fresh  power  of  venge- 
ance which  all  the  novel  instruments  have  placed 
in  their  inventors'  hands. 

Then  said  Lamech  to  his  wives  Adah  and  Zillahf 
Hearken  to  my  voice^ 
Give  ear  to  7ny  saying  : 
I  have  slain  a  man  for  the  hnrt  done  mey 
And  a  yonng  man  for  the  wound  of  me. 
If  seven  times  Qain  be  avenged^ 
Lamech  shall  be  seventy  times  seven. 
How   weird   is    this :    how    terrible !     The   first 
results   of   civilisation   are  to   equip  hatred  and 
render  revenge  more  deadly.     And  all  the  more 
weird  is  the  little  fragment,  that  out   of  those 
far-off  days   it   seems    to  mock    us   with    some 
grotesque  reflection  of  our  own  time.     Civilisa- 
tion  finding   its   apotheosis  in  enormous   arma- 
ments ;    wealth    and   prosperity    leading  people 
to  an  arrogant  clamour  for  war.-^ 

These   instances,   from   that  part  of  the  Old 

1  On  Gen.  i.-xi.,  see  Ryle,  Early  Narratives  of  Genesis;  Marcus 
Dods,  Genesis  {Expos.  Bible) ;  Budde,  Urgeschichte.  Against  the 
above  view  of  Lamech's  song,  see  Cheyne,  *  Cainites/  Encyc.  Bibl. 

G 


98         MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

Testament  in  which  we  can  be  least  sure  that 
we  are  treading  historical  ground,  are  surely 
enough  to  show  you  how  independent  of 
historical  certainty  (in  the  narrower  sense  of 
the  term)  are  the  materials  and  inspiration 
which  the  preacher  may  draw  for  his  own 
times  from  the  ancient  Scriptures  of  his  Church. 

Let  us  take  the  rest  of  Genesis  in  illustration 
of  the  same  truth.  With  the  close  of  the 
eleventh  chapter  we  pass  from  humanity  in 
general  to  the  call  of  one  family  and  the  career  of 
its  individual  heroes,  whose  characters  have  been 
so  largely  the  source  of  the  confident  preaching 
I  have  described.  After  the  criticism  of  the  past 
century,  how  does  it  stand  with  the  historical 
quality  of  the  narratives  from  Abraham  to 
Joseph?  And  if  that  quality  be  impaired,  what 
is  their  value  for  the  preacher? 

As  we  saw  in  last  Lecture,  the  documents  in 
which  the  narratives  are  presented  to  us  are  of 
various  dates,  from  the  ninth  or  eighth  to  the 
sixth  or  fifth  centuries  before  Christ.  The 
earliest  of  them,  the  Jahwist  and  Elohist,  to 
which  the  bulk  of  the  narratives  belong,  may 
be  approximately  assigned  to  the  eighth  century, 
and  of  the  same  age  are  the  earliest  prophetic 
references   to  the  Patriarchs ;  *  they  agree  with, 

1  Hosea's  to  Jacob,  xii.  3-5  (Heb.  2-4),  12,  13  (Heb.  11,  12). 
Cf.  the  references  by  Amos  to  the  conquest  of  Palestine  and  dis- 
possession of  the  Amorite  by  Israel  on  their  coming  forth  from 
Egypt  (ii.  9,  ix.  7,  and  by  Hosea  ii.  15  and  xi.  i). 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    99 

and  are  probably  drawn  from,  the  Jahwist- 
Elohist.  But  this  means  that  the  Hterature 
upon  which  we  are  dependent  for  our  know- 
ledge of  the  history  of  the  Hebrews  from 
Abraham  to  Joseph,  is  of  a  date  from  nine  to 
eleven  hundred  years  later  than  the  personages 
and  events  which  it  describes. 

Nor  can  archaeology  furnish  us  with  con- 
temporary evidence  of  the  Patriarchs  and  their 
careers.  Archaeology  has  indeed  restored  much 
of  the  life  to  which  they  belonged.  It  has  shown 
us  that  in  the  time  of  Abraham,  whom  the  docu- 
ments assert  to  have  come  out  of  Mesopotamia 
into  Palestine,  there  was  constant  traffic  between 
these  countries.  The  city,  to  which  the  early 
home  of  his  family  is  assigned,  has  been  identi- 
fied and  explored.  Ur  of  the  Chaldees  lies  on 
the  borders  of  Arabia  and  Babylonia.^  The 
settlement  there  of  a  nomadic  Arabian  tribe, 
such  as  the  earliest  records  of  Israel  prove 
them  to  have  been  in  genius  and  temperament; 
their  contact  for  a  time  with  civilisation;  their 
half-weaning  from  the  desert,  and  subsequent 
migration   northwards   along   the    Euphrates   to 

1  Ur  is  the  modern  Mukayyar  on  the  S.  bank  of  the  Euphrates, 
nearly  90  miles  (as  the  crow  flies)  from  the  present  junction  of  that 
river  with  the  Tigris.  Harran  lay  about  550  miles  to  the  NW. 
of  Ur,  about  80  miles  N.  of  the  Euphrates  at  Tiphsah  or 
Thapsacus,  the  ancient  'passage'  towards  Canaan;  and  between 
the  Euphrates  and  the  Habur  (mod.  Khabur),  probably  the  '  two 
rivers  '  of  the  name  Aram-Naharaim,  given  by  Gen.  xxiv.  10  as 
the  region  in  which  Harran  lay. 


loo       MODERN   CRITICISM  AND  THE 

Harran  and  then  south  into  Canaan,  are  all 
illustrated  not  only  by  archaeology  but  by  the 
drift  of  Arabian  tribes  upon  Mesopotamia  and 
Syria  within  historical  times.  These  last  also 
make  possible  the  wanderings  of  such  a  half- 
settled  family  as  Abraham's  upon  the  desert 
borders  of  Southern  Palestine  and  Egypt.  The 
four  Mesopotamian  kings,  of  whose  invasion  of 
Canaan  and  pursuit  by  Abraham  we  are  told 
in  Genesis  xiv.,  '  were  really  contemporaries ; 
and  at  least  three  of  them  ruled  over  the 
countries  which  they  are  said  in  Genesis  xiv. 
to  have  ruled  ' ;  and  their  invasion  of  Palestine 
was  *in  the  abstract,  within  the  military  possi- 
bilities of  the  age.'  ^  The  existence  of  the  names 
Jacob  and  Joseph  has  been  discovered  in 
Palestine  at  an  earlier  age  than  the  Exodus ;  2 
the  name  *  Israel,'  as  of  a  people,  in  touch  with 
Egypt,  has  been  deciphered  upon  a  stel6  of  the 
Pharaoh  under  whom  the  Exodus  probably  took 
place.^  And  not  only  does  the  story  of  Joseph 
reflect  the  social  customs,  the  economic  processes, 
and  the  official  etiquette  of  the  kingdom  of  the 
Pharaohs ;  *  but  the  settlement  of  a  semi-nomad 
tribe  in  Goshen,^  at  first  in  favour  with  the  court  of 

1  Driver,  Authority  and  Archeology,  p.  44. 

2  In  the  lists  of  cities  conquered  in  Palestine  by  Thothmes  ill. 
of  the  fifteenth  century,  cf.  W.  M.  Miiller,  Asien  u.  Europa^ 
162  flf. 

3  Merenptah  ;  cf  Steindorff,  ZA  TW,  xvi.  330  f. 
*  See  above,  pp.  62  ff. 

^  This  name  is  apparently  identical  with  Kesem,  the  twentieth 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   loi 

Egypt  and  then,  on  the  succession  of  another  dyn- 
asty, oppressed  and  enslaved,  has  also  been  proved 
to  be  perfectly  possible  in  the  history  of  Egypt 
between  the  eighteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries. 
But,  just  as  we  have  seen,  that  in  all  this 
archaeological  evidence  there  is  nothing  to  prove 
the  early  date  of  the  documents  which  contain 
the  stories  of  the  Patriarchs,  but  on  the  contrary 
even  a  little  which  strengthens  the  critical  theory 
of  their  late  date,^  so  now  we  must  admit  that 
while  archaeology  has  richly  illustrated  the  possi- 
bility of  the  main  outlines  of  the  Book  of  Genesis 
from  Abraham  to  Joseph,  it  has  not  one  whit 
of  proof  to  offer  for  the  personal  existence  or 
characters  of  the  Patriarchs  themselves.  Where 
formerly  the  figures  of  the  *  Father  of  the  Faith- 
ful '  and  his  caravans  moved  solemnly  in  high  out- 
line through  an  almost  empty  world,  we  see  (by 
the  aid  of  the  monuments)  embassies,  armies  and 
long  lines  of  traders  crossing,  by  paths  still  used, 
the  narrow  bridge  which  Palestine  forms  between 
the  two  great  centres  of  early  civilisation;  the 
constant  drift  of  desert  tribes  upon  the  fertile 
land,  and  within  the  latter  the  frequent  villages 
and  their  busy  fields,  the  mountain-keeps  with 
their  Egyptian  garrisons,  and  the  cities  on  their 
mounds  walled  with  broad  bulwarks  of  brick 
and  stone.     But  amidst  all  that  crowded  life  we 

nome  of  Lower  Egypt.     But  see  Griffith's  '  Goshen,'  Hastings's 
Bible  Dictionary.  i  See  above,  pp.  62  £f. 


102       MODERN   CRITICISM  AND   THE 

peer  in  vain  for  any  trace  of  the  fathers  of  the 
Hebrews;  we  listen  in  vain  for  any  mention  of 
their  names.  This  is  the  whole  change  archaeology 
has  wrought :  it  has  given  us  a  background  and 
an  atmosphere  for  the  stories  of  Genesis ;  it  is 
unable  to  recall  or  to  certify  their  heroes. 

With,  therefore,  nothing  more  from  archaeology 
than  the  sense  of  the  possibiHty  of  the  main 
events  of  these  stories,  we  return  to  the  stories 
themselves ;  and  here  we  meet  with  not  a  little 
that  confirms  the  scepticism  engendered  by  their 
late  date.  We  perceive,  yfrj/,  that  many  of  the 
personal  names  are  names  of  tribes  as  well; 
secojid,  that  the  characters  described  in  the  in- 
dividuals are  the  characters  developed  in  history 
by  the  corresponding  tribes;  and  ihirdf  that 
the  transactions  between  individuals,  who  bear 
tribal  names,  may  often  be  most  naturally  ex- 
plained as  transactions  between  tribes.  It  is 
hardly  necessary  to  give  instances  of  the  first 
of  these  facts :  the  recollection  of  the  sons  of 
Noah,  of  Abraham,  of  Isaac  and  of  Jacob  is 
enough.  But  take  a  few  illustrations  of  the 
second  and  third.  The  characters  of  Ishmael, 
of  Jacob  and  of  Esau  were  the  characters  of 
the  historical  tribes  Ishmael,  Israel  and  Edom. 
Jacob  is  the  essential  Israel;  in  economy, 
shepherds  settling  down  to  agriculture;  in 
religion,  worshippers  of  Jahweh  by  descent  and 
covenant,     meeting     Him     at     certain     famous 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   103 

shrines,  but  carrying  about  with  them  domestic 
gods,  as  we  see  even  in  the  family  of  David ; 
in  temperament  and  genius,  astute,  persistent, 
unbroken  by  disappointment  or  hope  deferred, 
capable  of  excelling  their  neighbours  in  the 
Semitic  craft  and  fraud,  but  capable  too  of 
vision  and  of  struggling  with  the  Unseen.  Esau, 
on  the  other  hand,  is  the  essential  Edomite,  as 
we  sec  him  in  Scripture,  as  we  realise  him  on 
his  proudly  isolated  territory,  as  we  touch  him  to 
the  last  in  Antipater  and  the  Herods  ^  —  a  hunter, 
a  man  of  the  field  or  wild  uncultivated  lands,  a 
man  with  gods  but  no  religiousness  ;2 /r^/^;^^, 
impulsive,  careless,  easily  wearied.  Similarly, 
Ishmael  with  his  hand  against  every  man^  Moab 
with  his  drunken  and  incestuous  origin,  and 
Reuben  with  his  unchastity,  are  reflections  of  the 
qualities  which  the  tribes  called  by  the  same 
names  appear  to  have  developed  in  history.  Or 
take  the  transactions  imputed  to  individuals 
with  tribal  names.  When  Jacob  marries  the 
daughters  of  the  Aramean  Laban,  and  after  a 
long  and  cruel  struggle,  which  proves  that  son 
and  father-in-law  cannot  share  the  same  lands, 
fixes  a  boundary  with  Laban  that  neither  shall 
pass,  *  they  plainly  represent  two  peoples  '^  at  one 

1  See  Book  of  the  Twelve  Prophets,  vol.  ii.  chap.  xiv. 

^  Cf.  the  curious  absence  of  any  influence  from  the  Edomite 
iv..^"  ~  on  Israel  in  the  midst  of  constant  influences  from  the 
religions  of  all  the  other  neighbours  of  Israel. 

3  Driver,  Hastings's  Bible  Dictionary.,  ii.  535^ 


I04       MODERN   CRITICISM  AND   THE 

time  related,  as  philology  and  ethnology  alike 
prove  the  Bible  to  be  right  in  stating,  but  later 
in  history  divided  —  and  this  on  the  very  line 
on  which  Jacob  and  Laban  are  said  to  have 
set  up  their  landmark.  Similarly,  when  Judah 
is  represented  as  going  down  from  his  brethren  ^ 
to  Adullam  and  begetting  children  by  a  Canaanite 
woman,  we  are  not  compelled  to  read  that  as  the 
story  of  a  scandalous  adventure  by  the  son  of 
Jacob.  We  may  much  more  naturally  interpret 
the  tale  as  an  account  of  the  irregular  marriages 
which  members  of  the  tribe  of  Judah,  situated 
within  historical  times  on  the  Central  Range  of 
Palestine,  contracted  with  the  Canaanites  on  the 
Shephelah  below  them. 

The  numerous  facts,  of  which  these  are 
sufficient  instances,  prove  that  we  have  in  the 
stories  of  the  Hebrew  Patriarchs  just  what  their 
late  date  would  lead  us  to  expect :  efforts  to 
account  for  the  geographical  distribution  of  neigh- 
bouring nations,  for  their  affinities,  contrasts, 
and  mutual  antipathies,  and  in  particular  for  the 
composite  character  of  Israel.  Perhaps  such 
efforts  become  most  transparent  in  the  derivations 
offered  for  geographical  names,  and  the  origins 
claimed  for  customs  and  institutions  extant  in 
the  writers'  own  day.  Finally,  this  view  is 
confirmed  by  the  undoubtedly  late  features 
which  can  be  recognised  in  the  stories,  and  by 

^  Genesis  xxxviii. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   105 

the  different  accounts  of  the  same  subject  in 
the  different  documents  according  to  the  char- 
acteristic spirit  of  each.  The  Blessing  of  his 
sons  attributed  to  Jacob  in  Genesis  xUx.  not 
only  describes  the  geographical  disposition  of 
the  Twelve  Tribes  after  their  settlement  in 
Palestine;  but,  in  verses  22-26,  reflects  the  ex- 
periences of  Northern  Israel  during  the  Aramean 
wars  of  the  ninth  century;  another  edition  of 
the  same  Blessing  is  attributed  to  Moses  in 
Deuteronomy  xxxiii.  In  the  Jahwist,  or  Judaean 
Document,  Judah  is  the  chief  of  his  brethren  ; 
but  in  the  Elohist,  Reuben.^  On  the  whole,  the 
religious  atmosphere  of  the  Jahwist  and  Elohist 
stories  throughout  Genesis  is  that  of  the  early 
kingdom  of  Israel.^  The  Patriarchs  sacrifice  in 
many  places,  like  Elijah  and  Elisha,  but  chiefly 
at  the  shrines  to  which  in  the  eighth  century,  as 
Amos  and  Rosea  tell  us,  the  Israelites  resorted  : 
Beer-sheba,  Bethel,  Gilgal  by  Shechem  —  the 
terebinth  of  Moreh  —  and  Mizpeh  of  Gilead.  In  the 
eighth  century  there  was  yet  no  Deuteronomic 
veto  on  sacrifice  at  places  other  than  the  one^ 
where  Jahweh  should  set  His  name.  The  Priestly 
Writers,  on  the  other  hand,  with  their  strict  views 

1  For  this  and  other  differences  in  the  combined  narratives  in 
Genesis  xxxvii.  see  the  analysis  by  Addis,  Documents  of  the 
Hexateiich,  i.  70  ff. 

2  See  Robertson  Smith's  trenchant  review  of  Kenan's  History  of 
Israel,  vol.  i.,  in  the  English  Historical  Review,  vol.  iii.  {il 
pp.  128  f. 


io6       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

of  the  confinement  of  ritual  to  the  central  sanc- 
tuary, never  make  any  allusion  to  the  licence  of 
sacrifice  which  the  Jahwist  and  Elohist  impute  to 
the  Patriarchs,  and  do  not  localise  the  appear- 
ances of  the  Deity  to  Abraham  or  to  Jacob  at 
any  of  the  shrines  famous  in  the  eighth  century.^ 
Surely  this  clinches  the  proof  that  the  stories 
of  the  Patriarchs  have  reached  us,  as  told  by 
later  generations,  who  reflected  upon  them  their 
own  conditions,  experiences  and  beliefs. 

It  is  extremely  probable,  however,  though 
impossible  of  proof,  that  the  stories  of  the 
Patriarchs,  thus  replete  with  the  circumstances 
and  conceptions  of  a  later  age,  have  at  the  heart 
of  them  historical  elements.  The  oldest  literary 
portions  of  the  documents  are  songs  and  poems, 
some  of  which,  although  (as  we  have  seen  in  the 
case  of  Genesis  xlix.)  they  also  bear  late  marks, 
may  have  grown  round  a  contemporary  kernel, 
while  a  few  others  may  be  altogether  from  the 
age  to  which  they  are  assigned.  A  more  signifi- 
cant symptom  is  the  presence  in  the  names, 
characters  and  deeds  of  the  Patriarchs  of  much 
which  cannot  be  interpreted  racially,  but  which 
is  distinctly  individual.  It  is  always  possible,  of 
course,  to  regard  this  as  the  addition  of  an  age,  in 
which  the  tribal  meaning  of  the  stories  had  been 
forgotten,   and   they   were   conceived   as   purely 

1  See  the  Priestly  Document  as  separately  set  forth  in  Addis's 
Documents  of  the  Hexateuch,  vol.  ii.  pp.  207  ff. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   107 

personal  narratives.  But  it  is  equally  just  to 
take  some  of  the  individual  elements  to  have 
existed  in  the  tradition  from  the  beginning,  and 
to  this  we  are  further  moved  by  two  considera- 
tions :  firsty  that  it  is  impossible  to  attach  any 
tribal  quality  to  some  of  the  names,  like  Abraham  ; 
and  secondy  that  a  great  religious  advance  such  as 
Abraham  is  said  to  have  made  has  always  an 
individual  character  and  experience  as  its  start- 
ing-point. With  critics  there  has  been  a  distinct 
reaction  of  late  in  favour  of  admitting  the  per- 
sonal reality  of  Abraham ;  ^  no  one  has  ever 
doubted  that  of  Moses;  while  Joshua's  person- 
ality rests  to-day  on  surer  grounds  than  in  the 
earlier  stages  of  criticism.^  With  regard  to  the 
more  difficult  cases  of  Jacob  and  Joseph,  the 
sane  and  expert  arguments  of  Canon  Driver  in 
his  articles  in  Hastings's  Bible  Dictionary  will  be 
felt  to  be  conclusive  by  all  who  have  not  in- 
continently abandoned  the  task  of  tracing  Israel's 
history  behind  the  Exodus. 

Such  is  the  case  for  the  narratives  of  the 
Patriarchs.  On  the  present  evidence,  it  is  impos- 
sible to  be  sure  of  more  than  that  they  contain 
a  substratum  of  actual  personal  history.  But 
who  wants  to  be  sure  of  more  ?  Who  needs  to 
be  sure  of   more }     If  there  be  a  preacher  who 

1  Cf.  Cornill,  Geschichte  des  israelii.  Prophetismus. 

2  See  article   '  Joshua '  by  the   present  writer  in  Hastings's 
Bible  Dictionary y  ii.  7S6  f. 


io8       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

thinks  that  the  priceless  value  of  these  narratives 
to  his  work  depends  on  the  belief  that  they  are 
all  literal  history,  let  him  hold  that  belief  if  he 
can,  and  confidently  use  them.  Or  if  he  cannot 
believe  that  Genesis  is  literal  history,  and  yet 
thinks  it  must  needs  be,  in  order  to  be  used  as 
God's  Word,  let  him  seek  his  texts  elsewhere: 
his  field  is  wide  and  inexhaustible. 

Than  these  extremes  there  is,  however,  a 
nobler  way:  and  the  honest  student  who  is 
ready  to  accept  the  evidence  and  example  of 
Scripture  itself  will  surely  find  this.  He  will  see 
that  the  sacred  writers  aimed  at  something  higher 
than  the  bare  reproduction  of  primitive  history 
—  in  itself  an  impossible  task;  that,  possessed 
by  the  experience  of  God  and  the  human 
heart,  which  subsequent  ages  of  the  Divine 
education  had  delivered  to  them,  they  read  all 
that  into  the  traditions  of  the  remote  past;  and 
so  achieved  the  creation  of  types  of  character 
essentially  historical,  not  only  in  this,  that  they 
portray  with  wonderful  fidelity  the  tempers, 
aspirations  and  experiences  of  Israel  and  her 
neighbours,  but  because  they  discover  human 
nature,  as  it  is  in  every  race  of  mankind,  and 
clearly  tell  of  the  reality  of  God,  as  they  them- 
selves had  been  inspired  by  His  Spirit  to  find 
Him.  To  the  sacred  authors  of  these  stories  we 
cannot  refuse  a  Hcence  of  dramatic  and  ethical 
expansion   which   we,   more   consciously,  permit 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   109 

in  our  own  preaching,  and  which  every  powerful 
preacher  of  the  traditional  school  has  fearlessly 
employed.  As  preachers,  we  cannot  refuse  to 
follow  the  narratives  of  Genesis  till  we  refuse  to 
follow  the  parables  of  Jesus. ^  If  criticism,  with 
the  help  of  archaeology,  has  failed  to  establish  the 
literal  truth  of  these  stories  as  personal  biogra- 
phies, it  has  on  the  other  hand  displayed  their 
utter  fidelity  to  the  characters  of  the  peoples 
they  reflect,  and  to  the  facts  of  the  world  and 
the  Divine  guidance  in  which  these  peoples  de- 
veloped. The  power  of  the  Patriarchal  narra- 
tives on  the  heart,  the  imagination,  the  faith  of 
men  can  never  die :  it  is  immortal  with  truth- 
fulness to  the  realities  of  human  nature  and 
of  God's  education  of  mankind. 

1  See  below,  on  Job,  in  Lecture  viii. 


no       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 


LECTURE   IV 

THE  PROOF   OF  A   DIVINE    REVELATION    IN    THE 
OLD    TESTAMENT 

We  have  now  reached  the  most  important  of  the 
questions  with  which  these  Lectures  have  to  deal. 
Does  the  criticism  —  whose  historical  results  are 
estimated  in  last  Lecture —  leave  to  us  unimpaired 
our  belief  in  the  Old  Testament  as  the  record 
of  a  Divine  Revelation?  It  is  true  that,  if  this 
question  had  to  be  answered  in  the  negative,  there 
would  still  remain  in  the  Hebrew  Scriptures 
matter  of  extraordinary  value  to  him  who  seeks 
to  lead  his  fellow-men  to  the  knowledge  of  God. 
Some  contain  parts  of  the  argument  which  we 
call  Natural  Theology ;  others  illustrate  how 
belief  in  God  is  consonant  with  experience  and 
indispensable  to  conduct ;  others  test  the  former 
of  these  conclusions  amid  the  apparently  hostile 
facts  of  life :  while  all  exemplify  the  truth  that 
whatsoever  religious  beliefs  be  shaken,  faith  in 
God  and  His  goodness  are  the  invariable  starting- 
point  and  inevitable  return  of  the  far-travelling 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   iii 

hearts  of  men.^  Yet  precious  as  such  human 
argument  and  experience  by  itself  would  be,  it  is 
all  of  less  interest  to  us  than  the  question  whether 
Israel's  knowledge  of  God  was  due  to  the  au- 
thentic, personal  action  of  God  Himself.  This  is 
the  testimony  of  the  writers  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, and  it  is  confirmed  by  our  Lord.  Here, 
then,  we  touch  the  very  crisis  of  our  inquiry. 

Before  we  examine  what  effect  modern  criti- 
cism has  had  on  the  answer  to  the  question  of 
Revelation,  we  must  see  whether  we  understand 
the  statement  of  the  question,  or  in  other  words 
what  are  the  exact  claims  to  Divine  inspiration 
which  the  Old  Testament  makes  for  itself.  These 
have  been  strangely  misunderstood  both  by  their 
assailants  and  by  most  of  their  defenders. 

In  the  first  place  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  —  in 
contrast  to  the  timidity  of  many  of  their  apolo- 

1  'As  Scripture  nowhere  contemplates  men  as  ignorant  of  the 
existence  of  God,  it  nowhere  depicts  the  rise  or  dawn  of  the  idea 
of  His  existence  in  men's  minds.  .  .  .  The  Hebrew  came  down 
from  his  thought  of  God  upon  the  world,  he  did  not  rise  from  the 
world  up  to  his  thought  of  God.  .  .  .  His  contemplation  of  nature 
and  providence  and  the  life  of  man  was  never  of  the  nature  of  a 
search  after  God  whom  he  did  not  know,  but  always  of  the  nature 
of  a  recognition  of  God  whom  he  knew.  .  .  .  The  singer  of 
Ps.  xix.  only  saw  repeated  on  the  heavens  what  he  already  carried 
in  his  own  heart.'  .  .  .  Isa.  xl.  25  ff.  '  teaches  nothing  new  or  un- 
known, it  recalls  what  is  known,  reburnishing  the  consciousness  of 
it,  in  order  to  sustain  the  faith  and  the  hopes  of  the  people.  There 
is,  however,  in  one  or  two  passages  an  approximation  to  some  of 
the  arguments  of  Natural  Theology,'  e.g.  Ps.  xciv.  5  ff.  —  Dr. 
A.  B.  Davidson,  article  '  God  *  (in  Old  Testament),  Hastings's 
Bible  Dictionary,  ii.  196. 


112       MODERN   CRITICISM  AND  THE 

gists  — emphasise  the  origin  of  human  valour  and 
justice,  skill,  art,  and  wisdom  —  all  common  virtue 
and  common  knowledge^  —  as  by  the  inspiration 
of  Almighty  God.  This  is  irrespective  of  the  use 
of  these  qualities  in  the  service  of  Israel.  The 
earth  is  Jahweh'  s  and  the  fulness  thereof ;  the  spirit 
of  man  is  the  candle  of  Jahweh.  By  Him  kings 
reign  and  princes  decree  justice.  Have  we  not  all 
one  Father,  hath  not  one  God  created  ns?  Of 
course  men  have  imaginations  and  thoughts 
which  are  not  God's  thoughts.  But  courage, 
wisdom,  justice,  wherever  found,  are  of  His  Spirit. 
Even  upon  civilisations  alien  to  Israel  and  doomed 
to  destruction,  like  those  of  Egypt  and  Phoenicia, 
Isaiah  pours  his  regrets  and  his  hopes,^  as  if 
their  powers  were  divine  and  might  yet  serve  the 
purpose  of  Jahweh.  But  the  writers  of  the  Old 
Testament  give  even  more  practical  proof  of  this 
generous  belief  by  their  adoption  from  sources 
beyond  Israel  of  cosmogonies,  traditions,  legends 
and  even  conceptions  of  Deity.  In  our  present 
inquiry,  therefore,  we  need   not   encumber  our- 

1  See  especially  Isaiah  xxviii.  6,  23-29,  and  Robertson  Smith's 
remarks  in  Old  Test,  ajid  Jew.  Church'^,  p.  340:  'According  to 
Isaiah  xxviii.  23  ff.  the  rules  of  good  husbandry  are  a  "judge- 
ment "  taught  to  the  ploughmen  by  Jehovah,  and  part  of  Jehovah's 
Torah  (verse  26).  The  piety  of  Israel  recognised  every  sound  and 
wholesome  ordinance  of  daily  and  social  life  as  a  direct  gift  of  Je- 
hovah's wisdom.  Accordingly  Jehovah's  law  contains,  not  only 
institutes  of  direct  revelation  in  our  limited  sense  of  that  word,  but 
old  consuetudinary  usages,  which  had  become  sacred  by  being 
taken  up  into  the  God-given  polity  of  Israel  and  worked  into  har- 
mony with  the  very  present  reality  of  His  redeeming  sovereignty.* 

2  Isa.  xix.  and  xxiii. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   113 

selves  with  the  question  of  the  inspiration  of 
other  literatures  than  that  of  Israel.  Whatsoever 
things  are  true,  honest,  just,  pure,  lovely  and  of 
good  report,  are  of  God.  His  providence,  too, 
is  universal.  Are  ye  not  as  the  children  of  the 
Ethiopians  tcnto  me,  O  children  of  Israel  f  saith 
Jahweh.  Have  I  not  brought  tip  Israel  out  of  the 
land  of  Egypt  and  the  Philistines  from  Kaphtor 
and  the  Syrians  from  Kir? 

But,  in  the  second  place,  the  Hebrew  writers 
claim  for  Israel  a  special  choice  and  providence 
by  God  in  order  that  He  may  make  known  to 
them,  as  He  directly  does  to  no  other  people  of 
mankind.  Himself:  that  is  to  say  not  in  His  meta- 
physical substance,  for  of  this  there  is  no  defini- 
tion in  the  Old  Testament,  but  in  His  character 
and  in  His  ethical  purposes  for  all  mankind.  In 
contrast  to  some  modern  theories,  which  regard 
Revelation  as  the  communication  by  supernatural 
means  of  many  kinds  of  truth  —  which,  as  we  have 
just  seen,  Israel  did  not  hesitate  to  borrow  from 
the  traditions  of  other  peoples  —  Revelation  by 
the  Hebrew  writers  is  limited  to  the  Revelation 
of  God  Himself:  and  that  not  of  the  fact  of  His 
existence,  which  the  Old  Testament  takes  for 
granted,  but  of  His  ethical  character  and  will  for 
men.  This  Revelation  they  represent  as  unique 
to  Israel,  and  with  equal  emphasis  assert  that 
it  has  not  been  discovered  by  human  efforts 
unaided,    but    that    God    Himself    has    '  taken 

H 


114       MODERN   CRITICISM  AND   THE  - 

the  initiative,'  ^  and  made  Himself  known  to 
Israel. 

In  the  light  of  these  two  aspects  of  Old 
Testament  doctrine  of  the  Knowledge  of  God, 
our  question  as  to  its  Revelation  is  not  therefore 
primarily  one  as  to  its  origins,  but  one  as  to 
its  contents.  Are  these  unique  ?  Do  we  have 
in  the  Old  Testament  a  true  knowledge  of  the 
character  and  ethical  purpose  of  God  which  we 
do  not  find  original  to  any  race  except  Israel  ? 
But  then,  secondly,  is  this  knowledge  all  ex- 
plicable as  impressions  of  God  received  through 
the  people's  physical  environment,  or  by  their 
merely  intellectual  inferences  from  the  facts  of 
their  history,  or  by  their  remarkable  combina- 
tion of  the  conceptions  of  God  which  they 
received  from  nations  with  whom  they  came 
into  contact  ?  ^  Or,  while  all  these  may  have 
been  used,  does  the  evidence  justify  the  claim 
of  Israel  that  God  in  His  Love  and  Holiness 
drew  near  to  this  people  and  impressed  Him- 
self personally  upon  them  through  the  events 
of  their  history  and  through  the  consciousness 
of  their  great  men  ? 

I  think  it  can  be  shown  that  criticism,  so  far 
from  throwing  doubts  either  upon  the  uniqueness 

1  A.  B.  Davidson,  oJ>.  cit.,  p.  197. 

2  It  is  one  of  the  great  services  of  Budde's  Religion  of  Israel 
before  the  Exile  to  show  how  much  Israel  benefited  religiously 
during  that  period  from  her  contact  with  other  Semitic  peoples. 
See  especially  p.  71  (but  cf.  below,  p.  132  of  this  Lecture). 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   115 

of  Israel's  true  knowledge  of  God,  or  upon  the 
personal  influence  of  God  as  producing  this, 
certainly  proves  the  former,  and  leaves  us  with 
the  latter  as  its  most  natural  and  scientific 
explanation.  Or  to  put  this  otherwise  —  the 
most  advanced  modern  criticism  provides  grounds 
for  the  proof  of  a  Divine  Revelation  in  the 
Old  Testament  at  least  more  firm  than  those 
on  which  the  older  apologetic  used  to  rely.^ 

Modern  research  has  achieved  this  service  for 
us,  first  by  changing  the  whole  arena  upon  which 
the  question  of  the  uniqueness  of  Israel's  religion 

1  It  would  be  very  easy  to  prove  the  compatibility  of  belief 
in  Revelation  in  the  Old  Testament  with  the  results  of  modern 
criticism  by  simply  citing  the  personal  dicta  of  some  of  the  most 
eminent  critics.  There  is  an  idea  abroad  among  Christians  that 
the  whole  critical  school  are  hostile  to  belief  in  Revelation.  For 
this  some  critics,  who  avoid  the  question  of  Revelation  even  when 
their  discoveries  lead  them  to  the  verge  of  it,  are  partly  to  blame  ; 
but  it  would  be  readily  dispelled  by  the  explicit  confessions  of 
such  a  belief  by  other  critics,  and  these  among  the  most  able  and 
advanced.  Kuenen  in  his  collected  Essays  approaches  the 
question  of  Revelation  in  the  Old  Testament,  yet  never  addresses 
himself  to  it.  I  stated  this  in  a  review  of  the  German  translation 
of  the  Essays  (Kuenen's  Gesammelte  Abhaendlun^^en,  1894)  in  the 
Expositor  (July-Dec.  1895),  and  the  translator,  Professor  Budde, 
a  pupil  of  Kuenen,  and  one  of  the  most  eminent  of  German  critics, 
wrote  me  that  the  observation  was  right,  but  that  as  for  himself 
his  belief  in  'a  genuine  revelation  of  God  in  the  Old  Testament 
remains  rock-fast.'  That  belief  has  been  shared  and  stated  by  a 
number  of  advanced  critics.  The  late  Professor  Robertson  Smith 
affirmed  again  and  again  his  belief  in  the  Divine  Origin  of  the 
Old  Testament,  and  in  the  last  of  his  Burnett  Lectures  (unfortun- 
ately unpublished),  proved  'the  uniqueness  of  Hebrew  prophecy 
and  the  impossibility  of  accounting  for  it  by  natural  or  historical 
reasons '  (from  an  MS.  report  of  the  last  Burnett  Lecture).  Cf.  also 
The  Old  Testament  in  the  Jewish  Church  ^,  p.  297. 


ii6       MODERN   CRITICISM  AND    THE 

has  to  be  fought  out.  Fifty  years  ago  the  apologist 
for  the  Old  Testament  could  determine  the  char- 
acter of  its  religion  only  by  comparison  with  those 
of  the  nations  of  classical  antiquity.  But  there 
was  always  something  unsatisfactory,  something 
impossible,  in  this  comparison.  The  Greeks  and 
the  Romans  were  Aryans,  Israel  was  Semitic ; 
there  did  not  appear  to  be  any  ground  common 
to  them  all  from  which  you  could  start  the  con- 
trast of  their  respective  developments.  The  older 
apologetic  for  the  Old  Testament  was,  therefore, 
more  or  less  unreal.  But  this  has  been  changed 
by  the  researches  of  the  past  fifty  years.  The 
discovery  of  the  monuments  of  Babylonia,  Syria 
and  Arabia,  the  study  of  the  pre-Mohammedan 
literature  of  the  Arabs,  the  observation  of  current 
life  in  the  Arabian  deserts,  have  disclosed  to  us 
the  ritual,  the  institutions,  the  conceptions  of  God 
)  and  the  world,  which  prevailed  in  the  race  from 
i  which  Israel  sprang.  We  are  able  to  contrast 
the  religion  of  Israel  with  those  of  peoples  who 
were  of  the  same  stock,  who  inhabited  similar 
geographical  conditions,  who  were  modified  by 
i  the  same  political  forces,  who  exhibited  the  same 
;  genius  and  temperament,  and  who  exercised 
strong  religious  influences  upon  Israel  at  various 
.  periods  in  her  history. 

\  At  first  it  appeared  as  if  this  recovery  of  the 
Semitic  race  as  a  whole  were  to  result  in  the 
proof  of  a  physical  origin  for  the  religion  of  Israel. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   117 

From  their  native  deserts  the  race  seem  to  have 
derived  a  capacity  for  detachment  from  the  things 
of  sense,  and  a  capacity  of  vision.  In  what  we 
may  call  the  religious  temperament,  and  in  the 
qualities  required  for  the  propagation  of  religion : 
the  powers  of  intuition,  of  introspection,  of  self- 
denial,  of  patience  under  hope  deferred,  of  zeal 
even  to  the  pitch  of  fanaticism,  the  Semite  in 
history  has  been  supreme.  Under  the  fascina- 
tion of  the  unfolding  of  the  complete  picture  of 
the  race,  derived  from  so  many  periods  and  areas, 
it  was  asserted  that  the  religion  of  Israel  was 
simply  the  flower  of  the  natural  religiousness  of 
the  Semitic  peoples. 

Others  went  further.  Besides  deriving  the 
religious  temper  of  the  Hebrew  from  his  racial 
origin,  they  essayed  to  trace  his  religious  creed  to 
the  same  source.  The  hypothesis  naturally  started 
from  the  fact  that  the  three  great  forms  of  mono- 
theism, Judaism,  Christianity  and  Islam,  have  all 
sprung  from  Semitic  peoples.  Does  this  prove, 
in  the  Semites,  or  in  the  history  of  the  world  they 
inhabited,  a  native  tendency  to  such  a  form  of 
faith  }  In  saying  that  religion  is  a  quality  of  the 
Semitic  temper,  are  we  able  to  narrow  our  terms 
and  assert  that  monotheism  was  a  necessary 
notion  of  the  Semitic  mind  ?  You  can  see  of 
what  importance  the  question  is  at  the  point 
which  we  have  reached.  On  the  answer  to  it 
depends  the  answer  to  our  question  about  a  real 


ii8       MODERN    CRITICISM   AND   THE 

revelation  in  the  Old  Testament.  It  requires, 
therefore,  a  detailed  examination. 

The  thesis,  that  monotheism  was  native  to  the 
Semitic  mind,  has  been  chiefly  maintained  by 
Renan.  More  than  forty  years  ago  he  asserted 
that  '  monotheism  summed  up  and  explained  all 
the  characteristics  of  the  race.'  The  origin  of 
this  he  found  in  the  desert,  the  birthplace  and, 
to  a  large  extent,  the  home  of  the  Semites. 
*  Nature,'  he  says,  *  plays  a  small  part  in  the 
Semitic  religion,  because  she  plays  a  small  part 
in  the  Semitic  world.'  *  The  desert  is  monotheist : 
sublime  in  its  immense  uniformity  it  has  revealed 
to  man  the  idea  of  the  infinite;  but  not  the  sense 
of  that  life  incessantly  creative  which  a  more 
fertile  nature  has  inspired  in  other  races.'  And 
from  this  *  austere,  grandiose  influence '  he  deduces, 
upon  the  lines  of  natural  development,  all  the 
contents  of  Israel's  monotheism.^ 

I  do  not  propose  to  spend  much  time  in  proving 
to  you,  in  contradiction  of  these  statements,  that 
all  Semitic  tribes  were  originally  polytheists,  for 
we  have  more  important  matters  in  hand  than  the 
proof  of  so  certain  a  fact.  Since  Renan  formed 
his  confident  opinions,  a  large  number  of  monu- 
ments have  been  discovered,  not  only  in  Babylonia 

1  See  *De  la  part  des  peuples  Semitiques '  in  \}clq  Journal 
Asiatiqite,  1859:  VHistoire  Generate  des  Langues  Semitiqiies,  1863 
(third  edition),  pp.  5  ff. ;  and  tlie  more  modified  statements  in  the 
Histoire  du  Penple  d' Israel,  i.  pp.  8  ff. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    119 

and  Phoenicia  (whose  nations  he  always  asserted 
to  be  exceptions  to  the  Semitic  rule),  but  in  the 
territories  of  the  Arameans,  Moabites,  Edomites, 
and  even  in  Central  Arabia,  which  bear  witness 
that  polytheism  was  the  religion  of  every  one  of 
these  tribes.  Sinai  and  Mecca,  from  which  two 
of  the  great  monotheisms  took  their  rise,  were 
both  of  them  desert  sanctuaries,  and  both  of 
them  were  pantheons.  We  do  not  see  anything 
different  when  we  shift  our  gaze  from  Mecca  and; 
Sinai  to  Jerusalem.  Palestine  repeats  the  yq-I 
ligious  record  of  Hauran,  Moab  and  Arabia.  As 
was  to  be  expected  where  nature  is  lavish,  agri- 
culture the  staple,  and  men  drink  wine;  where 
the  land  is  broken  up  into  well-defined  provinces, 
and  cities  multiply,  and  the  political  side  of 
religion  is  developed  with  its  differentiation  of 
many  deities  —  where,  in  fact,  on  the  seaboard 
of  the  Mediterranean  we  find  physical  and  poli- 
tical conditions  similar  to  those  of  Greece  —  the 
polytheism  of  the  Semite  becomes  luxurious  and 
rank.  Baalim  abound  everywhere:  Baalim  of 
the  underground  waters,  and  Baalim  of  the  waters 
above;  Baalim  of  the  mountains  and  Baalim  of 
the  plains ;  Baalim  of  the  sun  and  Baalim  of  the 
stars ;  Baalim  of  the  cities  and  Baalim  of  the 
tribes.  Every  nation  has  its  own  god,  and 
believes  in  the  reality  of  the  gods  of  its  neigh- 
bours. Every  power  in  nature  is  worshipped, 
till  altars  rise  on  every  high  hill  a?id  under  every 


120       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

green  tree,  with  a  mythology  which  is  not  only 
almost  as  elaborate  as  the  Greek,  but  many  of  the 
grossest  forms  of  which  the  Semitic  peoples  of 
Canaan  are  justly  supposed  to  have  conveyed  in 
early  times  to  the  Hellenic  world. 

Such  was  the  race  to  whose  natural  tendencies 
and  geographical  environment  Renan  traced  the 
origins  of  Israel's  monotheism.  They  were  poly- 
theists,  and  nowhere  did  their  polytheism  become 
more  rank  than  in  the  very  province  in  which 
Israel's  monotheism  culminated. 

Before,  however,  we  can  dismiss  Renan's  asser- 
tions, we  have  to  ask  whether  Semitic  polytheism 
contains  anything  which  points  either  to  a  primi- 
tive monotheism  or  to  an  ultimate  monotheism. 
Do  we  find  in  it  any  recollections  of  a  habit  of 
regarding  the  Deity  apart  from  the  various  gods, 
or  can  we  trace  in  the  Semitic  world,  outside 
Israel,  Christianity  and  Islam,  any  signs  of  a 
development  towards  monotheism? 

Of  the  former  of  these  the  evidence  is  extremely 
meagre.  Virtually  it  consists  only  in  the  posses- 
sion by  all  Semitic  peoples  of  a  common  word 
for  God,  '(?/,  which  proves  that  the  Semites  were 
able  to  form  the  abstract  conception  of  Deity, 
but  does  not  prove  that  outside  Israel  any  of 
them  had  ever  regarded  a  single  deity  as  univer- 
sally sovereign,  or  comprising  in  Himself  the 
functions  and  attributes  of  the  various  local 
gods.     On  the  other  hand,  Professor  Robertson 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   121 

Smith  has  shown  how  the  basis  of  all  Semitic 
faiths,  as  we  find  them  in  history,  appears  to  be 
the  physical  kinship  of  gods  and  men.  According 
to  that  notion  each  tribe  of  men  was  descended 
from  a  divine  father,  whose  blood  flowed  in  their 
veins,  and  who  was  lord  and  ruler  of  the  tribe 
alone.i  There  are  no  clearer  facts  about  Semitic 
religion  than  these  two:  that  every  tribe  had 
its  own  god,  and  that  between  a  tribe  and  its 
god  there  existed  a  congenital  solidarity,  so  to 
speak,  which  could  never  be  dissolved,  nor  have 
substituted  for  it  a  solidarity  between  the  tribe 
and  any  other  deity.  This  does  not  look  like 
a  religion  which  has  descended  from  a  primitive 
monotheism. 

Turning  to  our  second  question  —  was  there  in 
the  Semitic  form  of  religion  any  tendency  towards 
monotheism  t  We  cannot  deny  that  in  the  singu- 
lar relation  between  each  tribe  and  its  deity  there 
lay  what  we  may  call  a  great  opportunity  for 
monotheism.  To  have  one  God  singled  out  for 
the  tribe  as  supreme ;  to  believe  that  no  other 
was  his  equal  within  a  certain  territory  and  for  a 
certain  number  of  men  —  this  surely  gave  room 
and  time  for  a  purer  faith  to  develop.  It  meant 
a  habit  and  direction  of  the  mind  which  might 
be  employed  in  the  interests  of  unity.  But  in 
itself  it  was  no  more  than  this ;  and  we  can  see 
that  unless  there  were  present  in  that  space,  from 

1  Religion  of  the  Semites,  p.  31. 


122       MODERN    CRITICISM  AND   THE 

which  the  supremacy  (if  not  the  reality)  of  other 
gods  was  excluded,  and  at  work  upon  that  habit 
of  worshipping  one  as  the  governor  of  life,  some 
influence  superior  to  limits  of  space  and  capable 
of  employing  that  habit  for  a  spiritual  end,  the 
opportunity  would  be  lost  and  the  habit  rendered 
barren. 

Such  an  influence,  not  only  capable  of  sustain- 
ing the  habit  of  worshipping  one  god  within  the 
territory  of  the  tribe,  amid  all  temptations  to 
divide  his  worship  with  that  of  others,  but  strong 
enough  to  extend  this  habit  wherever  the  tribe 
travelled  or  the  thoughts  of  the  tribe  travelled, 
might  be  one  of  three  kinds  —  intellectual, 
political,  or  moral. 

Of  the  intellectual  forces  which  make  for 
monotheism,  the  two  most  powerful  are  the 
ability,  by  comparing  several  gods,  to  form  an 
abstract  conception  of  the  deity  common  to  them 
all;  and  the  conclusion  from  the  observation  of 
the  course  of  nature,  that  this  is  a  harmonious 
and  consistent  whole,  derivable  from  a  single 
cause.  Both  of  these  powers  are  found  among 
the  Semites ;  but,  outside  the  influence  of  Israel, 
neither  of  them  led  to  monotheism.  Of  the 
former  we  have  a  proof  in  the  possession,  already 
noticed,  by  all  the  Semites  of  a  common  name 
for  God  —  V/.  But  V/,  if  ever  used  as  a  proper 
name,  appears  to  have  been  regarded  as  that 
merely   of  one   other   god,   in   addition    to    the 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   123 

national  and  local  deities.  Again,  some  of  the 
Semites  developed  a  cosmogony,  but  outside  the 
Old  Testament  this  appears  never  to  have  been 
accompanied  by,  or  to  have  led  to,  monotheism. 
Gods  in  the  plural  and  of  both  sexes  assisted  at 
every  stage  of  it. 

Of  more  probable  influence  for  monotheism 
than  these  intellectual  tendencies  were  the 
political  forces  of  the  Semitic  world.  In  the 
growth  of  a  single  tribe  to  power  over  its  neigh- 
bours there  lay  the  possibility  of  its  deity  being 
raised  to  a  higher  rank  than  all  their  deities. 
Did  experiences  of  this  kind  never  develop  that 
opportunity  to  monotheism  which  we  have  found 
inherent  in  the  characteristic  form  of  Semitic 
religion  ?  The  answer  is  that  minor  conquests 
within  the  Semitic  world,  so  far  from  always 
extending  the  conqueror's  notion  of  the  power 
of  his  god,  constantly  brought  him  under  the 
temptation  of  adding  to  his  worship  of  the  latter 
the  worship  of  the  gods  of  the  land  which 
he  had  taken  and  occupied.  An  instance  of 
this  is  found  in  the  history  of  Israel,  who, 
after  the  settlement  of  Canaan,  frequently  fell 
under  the  fascination  of  the  local  Baalim,  with 
their  supposed  patronage  of  the  fertility  of  the 
soil.  No  general  conquest  by  one  tribe  of  all 
the  others  took  place  before  the  great  advance 
of  the  Assyrian  Empire  in  the  eighth  century 
before  Christ.     This  discredited,  as  we  see  from 


124       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

the  prophecies  of  Isaiah,  a  number  of  the  local 
and  tribal  deities  in  the  Semitic  world,  who  did 
not  enable  their  worshippers  to  resist  it.  It 
helped  to  shatter,  as  Robertson  Smith  has  pointed 
out,  the  tribal  limits  of  religion,  and  so  far  was 
undeniably  a  new  opportunity  for  the  develop- 
ment of  monotheism.  Yet,  in  the  long-run,  the 
Assyrian  conquests  only  substituted  among  the 
Semites  a  small  number  of  new  gods  for  the  crowd 
of  discredited  deities ;  and  by  divorcing  religion 
from  the  local  interests  and  everyday  life  of  the 
tribesmen  and  throwing  it  back  into  association 
with  the  forces  of  nature,  those  conquests  did 
religion  more  harm  than  good.^ 

This  brings  us  to  the  last  of  the  possible  forces 
which  make  for  monotheism  —  the  ethical.  In 
the  fragmentary  condition  of  the  monuments  and 
traditions,  upon  which  we  depend  for  our  know- 
ledge of  the  pagan  Semitic  religions,  it  is  diffi- 
cult for  us  to  appreciate  the  ethical  contents  of 
the  latter.  This,  however,  is  certain.  The  fact 
that  the  gods  were  tribal  brought  religion  into 
touch  with  the  practical  conduct  of  life,  with  the 
discharge  of  justice,  and  with  public  emergencies. 
But  there  the  ethical  virtue  of  it  appears  to  have 
ceased.  The  duty  of  the  god,  the  help  he  could 
afford,  were  identified  with  the  selfish  interests 
of  the  tribe.  Not  justice  nor  mercy  was  the 
supreme  care  of  the  deity,  but  the  victory  and 

1  See  Robertson  Smith,  Religion  of  the  Semites,  pp.  35,  65. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   125 

prosperity  of  his  people.  On  the  one  hand, 
there  can  have  been  no  idea  of  humanity  as  a 
whole;  on  the  other,  little  sense  of  the  value  of 
the  individual  in  himself.^  The  awe  and  sanction 
of  religion  kept  a  man  in  his  place  as  part  of  the 
tribal  organism ;  but  ethically  it  did  not  develop 
his  individuality  beyond  his  public  duties  of 
courage,  and  devotion  to  the  interests  of  the  tribe. 
The  god,  who  (as  several  scholars  have  pointed 
out)  was  simply  the  glorified  sheikh  of  the  tribe, 
had  a  moral  interest  only  in  the  fulfilment  of 
the  individual's  social  obligations  and  due  per- 
formance of  the  ritual,  but  had  no  concern 
with  his  spiritual  character.  In  short,  it  may 
be  said,  reversing  the  well-known  words  about 
Jahweh,  that  the  Semitic  god  saw  as  man  seeth ; 
he  looked  not  upon  the  heart.  Wellhausen  says 
of  the  heathen  Arabs,  even  after  some  influences 
of  Judaism  and  Christianity  had  come  upon  them» 
that  reHgion  did  not  work  with  any  energy  upon 
the  thinking  or  doing  of  the  individual.  No  doubt 
the  individual  was  affected  by  the  fear  of  God. 
But  even  in  the  days  when,  under  foreign  influ- 
ence, the  heathen  Arabs  had  slightly  anticipated 
Mohammed  in  the  conception  of  one  God,  He 
aflected  them  only  in  one  way.  The  highest 
moral  name  they  gave  Him  was  El-Waz',  the 
Restrainer.2    That  is  to  say,  the  thought  of  God 

1  This  is  very  apparent  from  the  early  religion  of  Israel. 

2  Wellhausen,  Reste  arabischen  Heidentumes,  p.  191. 


126       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

kept  them  from  sin,  but  was  powerless  to  inspire 
them  to  new  ideals  of  virtue.  For  the  rest,  the 
Deity  moved  above  the  individual,  an  inscrutable 
yet  easily  irritated  Fate :  God  that  was  force  and 
not  character. 

This  has  been'  a  somewhat  long  survey,  but 
your  attention  will  not  have  been  wasted  if  it 
has  led  you  to  understand  that,  while  there  existed 
in  the  fundamental  form  of  Semitic  religion  and 
at  various  crises  in  Semitic  history  certain  oppor- 
tunities for  the  development  of  monotheism,  and 
also  some  influences  which  make  for  monotheism, 
yet  outside  Israel  those  influences  were  not  power- 
ful enough  to  make  use  of  the  opportunities. 

How,  then,  was  it  that  monotheism  appeared 
in  Israel  alone  of  all  ancient  Semitic  nations  ? 
How  was  this  member  of  the  race  alone  able 
to  take  advantage  of  opportunities  which  all  the 
others  shared  with  her;  and  in  a  physical  environ- 
ment, very  fertile  in  polytheism,  not  merely  to  rise 
above  this  to  a  stage  of  religion  subordinate  only 
to  the  Christianity  of  Christ,  but  to  exhibit 
throughout  her  whole  history  a  religious  progress 
which  Christ  affirmed  to  be  the  gradual  prepara- 
tion for  Himself? 

To  this  unique  exception  in  the  history  of 
Semitic  religion  it  is  my  firm  belief  that  only 
one  cause  can  be  assigned,  and  that  is,  that  in 
the  religion  of  Israel,  as  recorded  in  the  Old 
Testament,  there  was  an  authentic  revelation  of 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   127 

the  One  True  God:  of  which  thesis  the  rest  of 
this  Lecture  is  offered  as  a  proof  on  the  lines  of 
modern  criticism.  And  as  the  proof  is  most 
difficult  with  regard  to  the  earlier  stages  of 
Israel's  history  in  which  we  see  their  religion 
not  yet  far  removed  from  the  ordinary  Semitic 
levels,  I  propose  to  limit  the  inquiry  to  the  period 
before  the  greatest  prophets.  If  we  can  prove 
the  possibility  of  revelation  among  the  religious 
conditions  which  then  existed,  the  pure  mono- 
theism of  the  prophets  which  followed,  and  the 
culmination  of  the  whole  process  in  Christ,  will 
complete  and  vindicate  our  argument. 

There  is  no  necessity  to  prove  in  detail  the 
Semitic  origins  of  the  Hebrews  and  their  religion.^ 
The  traditions  of  the  people  affirm  not  only  these 
but  the  close  kinship  of  Israel  to  certain  tribes  of 
the  race  which  still  clung  to  the  ancestral  desert, 
or  had  not  drifted  beyond  its  borders :  Ishmael, 
Ammon,  Moab  and  Edom.  Israel  were  at  first 
a  loose  confederacy  of  clans  descended  from  a 
common  ancestor,  and  cursed  with  theincoherency 
of  all  Semitic  society.  They  came  out  of  the 
desert  into  Palestine,  and  through  the  formative 
period  of  their  history  not  only  were  affected 
by  the  neighbourhood  of  the  desert  to  their 
territory  ;  but  portions  of  them  intermarried  with 

1  I  have  given  detailed  proofs  in  the  first  of  the  Jowett  Lectures 
on  the  Religion  of  Israel  in  the  Eighth  and  Seventh  Centuries, 
which  I  hope  soon  to  publish. 


128       MODERN    CRITICISM   AND   THE 

desert  tribes  or  continued  in  close  alliance  with 
these.  Their  fathers  had  been  nomads  ;  and 
the  characters  of  their  typical  men,  as  for  instance 
Jacob,  are  essentially,  in  their  good  and  bad 
elements,  the  characters  of  the  desert  herdsmen. 

It   is    in    their    religion,    however,    that    their 
Semitic  origin   is   most  apparent.      The  god  of 
early  Israel  was  a  tribal  god  ;   and  His  relation 
to   His  people  is   described  in  the  same  way  as 
Israel's  neighbours  describe  the  relation  of  their 
gods  to  themselves.     Israel  looked  to  Jahweh  as 
the  Moabites  looked  to  Chemosh,  for  leadership 
in  war,  for  decisions  upon  justice  —  including  the 
detection  of  criminals  and  lost  property  and  the 
settlement  of  questions  of  inheritance  —  and  for 
direction   as    to    the    ritual    of   worship.     They 
prayed   to  him  to  let  them  see   their  desire  on 
their   enemies,    ascribed    their   victories    to    His 
love   for  them,  their  defeats  to   His   anger,   and 
they  devoted  to  Him  in  slaughter  their  prisoners 
of   war,    and    the    animals    they    captured   from 
their  foes  ;  all  exactly  as  their  Moabite  neighbours 
are  reported,  in  very  much  the  same  language,^ 
to   have   done   to   Chemosh,  the  god   of  Moab. 
Moreover,  they  regarded  the  power  of  Jahweh  as 
limited  to  their  own  territory,   and  His  worship 
as  invaUd  beyond  it.^     Though,  like  all  Semites, 
they  felt  their  duty  to  one  God  as  the  supreme 
Lord  of  themselves,  they  did  not  deny  the  reality 

1  The  Moabite  Stone.  '^  i  Sam.  xxvi.  19. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   129 

of  other  gods.^  Again,  like  other  Semites,  early 
Israel  associated  their  God  with  certain  physical 
forces.  The  manifestations  of  Jahweh  took  place 
in  the  rain,  the  thunderstorm,  the  lightning  and 
the  fire ;  His  voice  was  heard  in  the  stir  of 
the  trees  before  the  wind.^  Again,  the  ritual  of 
Israel  is  full  of  exact  analogies  to  the  ritual 
of  Semitic  sanctuaries  from  Cyprus  to  Southern 
Arabia.  The  sacrifice  of  certain  animals  at  certain 
seasons  of  the  year  ;  the  smearing  of  lintels  and 
other  objects  with  blood  ;  the  anointing  of  pillars 
in  honour  of  the  Deity  ;  the  presence  of  human 
sacrifices  with  as  much  infrequency  and  sense  of 
the  awful  crisis  that  demands  them  as  elsewhere 
in  the  Semitic  world  ;  the  worship  of  images  by 
Jacob's  family,  by  David,  and  at  the  sanctuaries 
of  the  Northern  Kingdom  ;  the  discovery  of  the 
Deity's  will  through  dreams,  in  ecstasy  or  by 
lot;  the  attestation  of  the  Divine  word  by 
physical    signs    accompanying  it ;    circumcision ; 

1  Not  even  by  the  Second  Commandment,  which  is  not  a 
declaration  of  monotheism,  but  only  the  obligation  to  have 
Jahweh,  of  all  the  gods,  as  their  sole  god.  It  is  difficult  to  say 
when  the  sense  of  the  reality  of  other  gods  died  out  in  Israel. 
It  is  confessed  by  David:  it  is  implicit  in  the  absence  of  all 
missionary  effort  in  pre-prophetic  times,  and  the  remembrance  of 
it  lingers  even  in  so  monotheistic  a  Book  as  Deuteronomy  ;  one 
of  the  verses  in  which,  iv.  17,  is  a  curious  compromise  between 
the  belief  in  the  reality  of  the  heathen  gods  and  that  in  the  divine 
sovereignty  of  Jahweh.  Not  till  Jeremiah  and  the  second  Isaiah 
do  we  find  language  used  of  the  idols  which  expresses  unam- 
biguously the  writer's  belief  in  their  nothingness. 

2  Genesis  iii.  8  ;  2  Sam.  v.  23  ff. 

I 


130       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

the  law  of  blood-revenge  and  its  mitigation  by 
the  rights  of  sanctuary ;  the  sacrifice  of  spoil  of 
war  to  the  Deity :  all  these  things  have  not  only 
for  the  most  part  the  same  names  as  in  other 
Semitic  languages,  but  — except  for  a  higher 
moral  character  which,  however,  only  sometimes 
distinguishes  them  —  they  are  the  same  as  among 
other  Semites,  in  intention  and  details  of  execu- 
tion. And  finally  (as  we  shall  see  in  another 
Lecture,  so  that  we  need  not  go  into  detail  upon 
the  subject  now),  early  Israel  had  as  little  re- 
ligious interest  as  other  Semites  in  a  future  life. 
Except  in  the  case  of  one  or  two  heroes^  this 
was  not  connected  with  the  Deity :  if  men 
inquired  of  it  they  did  so  not  by  religion  but 
by  magic  and  necromancy.  The  reason  of  such 
a  separation  between  religion  and  the  future  life 
was  precisely  that  which  accounts  for  it  elsewhere 
in  the  Semitic  world.  The  unit  of  religion  was 
the  living  tribe  :  they  were  the  interest  and  care 
of  the  Deity;  with  whom  the  individual  had  no 
part  or  portion  except  in  his  place  as  a  living 
member  of  the  tribe. 

It  is  plain,  then,  that  to  whatever  heights  the 
religion  of  Israel  afterwards  rose,  it  remained 
before  the  age  of  the  great  prophets  not  only 
similar  to,  but  in  all  respects  above-mentioned 
identical  with,  the  general  Semitic  religion  ;  which 
was  not  a  monotheism,  but  a  polytheism  with  an 

1  Enoch  and  Elijah. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   131 

opportunity  for  monotheism  at  the  heart  of  it 
—  each  tribe  being  attached  to  one  god,  as  to 
their  particular  Lord  and  Father. 

Our  next  question  is  whether  any  of  the  forces 
which  could  take  advantage  of  this  opportunity 
for  monotheism  ^  were  present  in  Israel  to  a 
greater  degree  than  we  have  found  them  among 
the  other  Semites. 

To  begin  with  \.\\q  political,  —  we  find  that  up  to 
the  eighth  century  the  history  of  Israel  was  largely 
one  of  conquest.  In  the  belief  of  the  people 
this  history  had  been  started  by  the  victories  of 
their  God  over  one  of  the  great  empires  of  the 
world.  Jahweh  had  brought  His  people  out  of 
Egypt,  divided  the  sea,  led  them  through  the 
desert  and  dispossessed  the  nations  of  Canaan 
before  them.  These  experiences  must  have  lifted 
Israel's  ideas  of  Jahweh  very  much  above  the 
level  of  the  respect  entertained  for  their  deities 
by  nations  who  remembered  nothing  of  their 
own  history  except  as  transacted  within  the 
narrow  bounds  of  their  territories.  We  have 
more  than  one  proof  that  the  faltering  faith  of 
early  Israel  in  the  power  of  Jahweh  was  wont  to 
refresh  itself  by  the  memory  of  those  great 
events.  This,  however,  as  we  have  seen,  did 
not  cure  even  the  leaders  of  the  people  of  their 
belief  in  the  reality  of  other  gods;  and  indeed 
the  settlement  in  Canaan,  so  far  from  extending, 

1  See  above,  p.  122. 


132       MODERN   CRITICISM  AND   THE 

in  their  regard,  Jahweh  of  Sinai's  power  over  that 
land,  brought  them  under  the  fascination  of  its 
native  gods,  the  patrons  of  its  agriculture.  With 
such  experiences  others  conspired,  especially 
when,  under  Solomon  and  Ahab,  Israel  entered 
into  commerce  with  foreign  peoples  and  con- 
cluded political  alliances ;  for  such  relations  in- 
volved the  erection  of  shrines  to  alien  gods 
side  by  side  with  the  altars  of  Jahweh.  It  is 
certain,  then,  that  without  the  presence  of  other 
influences,  Israel's  political  history  would  have 
been  powerless  to  produce  her  monotheism.^ 

Nor  can  we  describe  these  influences  as  in- 
tellectual. Early  Israel  does  not  seem  to  have 
had  more  of  the  power  of  sustained  speculation 
than  her  Semitic  neighbours.  As  we  have  seen, 
there  is  little  argument  in  the  Old  Testament 
for  the  being,  and  none  for  the  unity,  of  God. 
The  cosmogony  of  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis 
belongs  to  the  youngest  of  the  Pentateuchal 
documents,  and  is  of  date  subsequent  to  that  at 
which    the    ethical    foundations   of   monotheism 

1  Professor  Budde  has  acutely  remarked  in  his  recent  lectures 
on  The  Religion  of  Israel  before  the  Exile,  (p.  71),  that  the  con- 
tact with  other  gods  did  not  altogether  mean  religious  loss  for 
Israel.  They  probably  learned  in  Canaan  to  associate  the  more 
beneficent  forces  of  nature  with  the  Deity,  as  they  saw  them 
exemplified  in  the  native  gods,  and  they  transferred  the  attributes 
of  these  to  Him.  This  is  true,  but  the  transference  would  not 
have  taken  place,  or  at  least  would  not  have  been  unaccompanied 
by  the  grosser  features  of  those  gods,  unless  from  other  sources 
Israel  had  been  convinced  of  the  higher  ethical  character  of 
Jahweh. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   133 

were  already  laid  by  the  prophets.  The  eighth 
chapter  of  the  Book  of  Proverbs,  sometimes 
called  *  the  only  metaphysic  in  the  Bible/  is 
probably  of  a  still  later  origin.  And  whatever 
the  date  of  the  Book  of  Job  may  be,  its  argu- 
ments on  God  are  not  those  of  the  head,  but 
those  of  the  heart  and  conscience. 

We  turn,  therefore,  to  Israel's  ethical  attain- 
ments before  the  eighth  century,  and  here,  in 
the  opinion  of  all  critics,  we  at  last  find  proofs 
of  the  distinction  of  her  religion  from  that  of 
other  Semites,  and  the  sources  of  the  mono- 
theism which  culminated  in  her  prophetical 
writings. 

By  the  beginning  of  the  pre-prophetic  period 
the  Jahwist  and  Elohist  documents^  were 
extant  in  Israel.  We  have  already  seen  the 
high  conceptions  which  govern  the  Jahwist's 
account  of  the  origin  and  early  civilisation  of 
man.  In  the  stories  of  Jacob  and  Joseph  we 
are  presented  with  portraits  of  character  which 
display  great  powers  of  ethical  reflection,  and 
in  the  story  of  Joseph  reveal  the  purest  and 
most  tender  of  moral  ideals.  The  responsibility 
of  the  individual  to  God  in  matters  deeper  than 
those  of  a  tribal  morality  is  taken  for  granted. 
How  can  I  do  this  great  wickedness  and  sin  against 
Jahweh  ?    says  Joseph    in    answer   to    the   chief 

1  With  the  exception  of  some  later  strata,  which  I  shall  avoid 
in  the  following  ethical  estimate  of  the  documents. 


134       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

temptation  of  his  life ;  ^  and  again  he  explains 
the  motive  of  his  treatment  of  his  brethren  in 
the  words,  for  I  fear  God?"  Throughout  these 
early  documents  God's  care  of  the  individual  is 
beautifully  illustrated. 

Now  it  may  be,  as  some  critics  hold,  that 
these  documents,  in  the  form  in  which  we  possess 
them,  were  composed  after  the  teaching  of  the 
eighth-century  prophets  had  begun  to  work  in 
Israel.  Yet  even  allowing  this,  we  must  assign 
to  the  processes  of  ethical  reflection  which 
blossomed  in  them  a  considerably  earlier  date. 
The  possibility  is  confirmed  by  those  stories  of 
David  which  cannot  be  much  later  than  David's 
own  time.  In  those  we  have  already  found  ^ 
the  records  of  a  character  whose  essentially 
Semitic  features  do  not  show  more  real  to 
nature  than  the  higher  qualities  which  dramati- 
cally mingle  with  them.  This  lofty  ethic  appears 
in  connection  with  the  national  God.  David's 
sin  is  discovered  to  him  by  a  prophet  of 
Jahweh  :  it  is  before  Jahweh  that  the  guilty  king 
repents  and  humbles  himself.  A  century  and  a 
half  later  we  have  confirmatory  evidence  of  the 
morale  of  Israel's  religious  leaders.  Micaiah 
ben  Imlah  breaks  from  the  racial  idea,  that  the 
tribal  God  must  necessarily  give  his  tribe  the 
victory,  and  at  the  risk  of  martyrdom  proclaims 

1  Gen.  xxxix.  9. 

2  Gen.  xlii.  18.  »  See  Lecture  iii.,  pp.  79  ff. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   135 

from  Jahweh  Ahab's  defeat.^  As  we  saw  in  last 
Lecture,^  the  zeal  of  Elijah  for  Jahweh  is  inex- 
plicable except  on  the  belief  that  Jahweh's 
character  is  absolutely  different  from  that  of 
other  deities.  The  prophet's  intolerance  of  the 
latter  must  have  had  ethical  reasons ;  and  this 
view  is  confirmed  by  the  manner  in  which 
Elijah  enforces  Jahweh's  claims,  not  only  against 
the  Phoenician  deities  but,  in  the  teeth  of  Ahab 
and  Israel  themselves ;  predicts  the  employment 
of  a  foreign  nation  by  Jahweh  to  punish  Israel ; 
and  champions  against  the  injustice  of  the  king 
the  rights  of  the  subject  in  the  case  of  Naboth 
and  his  vineyard.  We  see,  then,  that  before  the 
eighth  century  the  ethics  of  Israel  had  already 
burst  the  bonds  of  a  tribal  morality  within 
which  other  Semitic  religions  were  still  confined. 
This  is  what  we  should  have  expected  from  the 
appearance  of  so  largely  developed  an  ethical 
monotheism  in  the  prophets  of  the  eighth  cen- 
tury. It  would  be  unscientific  to  wholly  doubt 
their  testimony  that  the  principles  they  enforce 
were  not  new  in  Israel.  A  religion  such  as  theirs 
is  no  isolated  creation. 

We  have  now  to  ask,  what  were  the  sources 
of  those  ethical  features  in  the  religion  of  early 
Israel,  which  so  largely  prepared  the  way  for 
the  monotheism  of  the  prophets  and  helped  to 

1  I  Kings  xxii. 

2  Pp.  82  f. 


136       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

render   the   creed   of  Israel   so   conspicuous   an 
exception  in  the  religion  of  the  Semites? 

Among  modern  critics  there  is  virtual  unani- 
mity in  carrying  back  the  origin  of  Israel's 
ethical  distinction  to  the  time  of  Moses,  and  in 
regarding  him  as  its  instrument.  Kuenen,  for 
instance,  who  is  so  careful  to  claim  the  prophets 
as  the  creators  of  ethical  monotheism,  admits  that, 
though  Jahweh  of  early  Israel  and  Chemosh  of 
Moab  (for  example)  were  branches  of  the  same 
stock,  '  sons  of  the  same  house,'  there  must  have 
been  in  the  Jahweh  religion  from  the  very  begin- 
ning the  germs  of  that  development  which  it 
afterwards  achieved  in  such  marvellous  distinction 
from  all  the  other  faiths  from  whose  level  it 
had  started.  But  though  the  origins  of  Israel's 
distinction  are  thus  generally  assigned  to  the 
Mosaic  period,  there  is  some  difference  of  opinion 
as  to  what  was  their  exact  cause.  Israel  in  the 
time  of  Moses  enjoyed  the  same  motives  to 
ethical  development  as  we  have  seen  existing 
in  other  Semitic  tribes.  The  close  association 
of  the  deity  with  the  tribal  morals  and  public 
justice  presented  many  opportunities  of  reflection 
on  his  character,  which  the  honest  and  able 
minds  among  his  accredited  representatives  can 
scarcely  have  failed  to  employ,  with  the  result 
of  raising  the  tribal  conception  of  the  divine 
commands,  and  the  ethical  ideal  generally.  How 
did  Israel  alone  succeed  in  taking  advantage  of 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   137 

such  opportunities?  It  is  not  enough  to  answer 
that  her  intellect  must  have  been  quicker  and 
more  reflective  than  that  of  other  Semites ;  nor, 
as  we  have  seen,  that  Israel's  political  history, 
which  so  powerfully  assisted  her  religious  de- 
velopment, was  itself  the  cause  of  that. 

A  more  probable  origin  for  the  ethical  superi- 
ority   of     Israel     has   been    sought    in   another 
direction.     Historians  of  the  world's  faiths  have 
learned   to  distinguish   between  nature  religions 
and   historical   religions ;    between    those   which 
represent    the    original    connection    of    a   deity 
with   his    worshippers    as    physical,    and    those 
which   describe   the   deity   as    drawing   near   to 
his  people  and  becoming  known  to  them  through 
events    in    their    history.     The   faith    of    Israel 
was    of  the  latter   kind.     The  people's  memory 
traced  their  relations  with  Jahweh  to  what  their 
earliest  historians  call  a  covenant  between  Him 
and  them.     Their  prophets  appeal   to  what  has 
evidently  been  a  long-established  belief   among 
the   people,    that  Jahweh    had  not   always  been 
the  god  of  Israel,  but  that  He  found  them  at  a 
crisis    in  their  history,  and  offered  His  help  in 
return    for    their    obedience.      He    had   chosen 
them,  and  they  had    taken    Him    as    their   lord 
and  god.     The   true   metaphor  for  this   relation 
was    not  paternal  but   conjugal :   it  rested  on  a 
contract.     In    Israel's    belief  in   this  transaction 
some  historians   of  her  early   rehgion    find    the 


138        MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

germs  of  her  rapid  ethical  development.^  It  does 
not  seem  to  me,  however,  to  exhaust  the  secret 
of  which  we  are  in  search.  For  Israel  alone  did 
not  recognise  reciprocal  duties  between  them- 
selves and  their  God ;  other  peoples,  however 
physical  they  conceived  the  origin  of  their 
relations  with  their  deities  to  be,  interpreted 
these  relations  as  involving  mutual  responsi- 
bilities between  each  god  and  his  nation.  Their 
histories  gave  them  also  opportunities  of  reflect- 
ing on  the  meaning  of  their  god's  anger  with 
them  as  experienced  in  their  defeats  and  the 
devastation  of  their  lands.  Nevertheless,  they 
were  not  thereby  inspired  to  the  ethical  develop- 
ment which  we  see  in  Israel.  Or  look  within 
Israel.     The  popular  religion  which  the  prophets 

1  Professor  Budde  has  given  a  very  able  and  reasonable  state- 
ment of  this  hypothesis  in  the  first  of  his  American  Lectures  on 
The  Religion  of  Israel  tip  to  the  Exile.  'Israel  accepted  Jahve's 
offer  to  be  its  god ;  and  relying  on  his  promise  through  Moses  to 
deliver  it  found  he  kept  his  word  and  felt  that  it  owed  him 
gratitude  and  fidelity  in  return  for  the  boon/  *  He  was  unknown 
to  it  before.  It  knew,  however,  this  much  from  experience,  that 
he  was  a  great  and  powerful  god  who  could  help  if  he  would.  It 
could  adopt  his  worship  only  with  fear  and  dread,  always  in  doubt 
whether  it  had  fathomed  the  depths  of  his  nature,  whether  its 
actions  found  favour  with  Jahve  and  would  be  regarded  as 
sufficient  proof  of  fidelity.  Whenever  things  went  badly  with  the 
people,  it  was  far  from  thinking  that  Jahve  had  not  power  to 
help.  On  the  contrary,  its  conscience  awaked  each  time  to  the 
questions  :  "  Wherein  have  I  deserved  the  displeasure  of  Jahve  .'* 
What  must  I  do  to  ensure  his  favour.-*"  Thus  arose  a  really 
living  force  whose  operation  tended  to  the  ethical  development  of 
-Israel's  religion.  .  .  .  The  germ  of  this  whole  development  took 
place  at  Sinai.  .  .  .' 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   139 

attacked,  itself  contained  the  idea  of  a  con- 
tract between  the  nation  and  Jahweh,  and  was 
conscious  that  His  fulfilment  of  that  contract 
demanded  obedience  and  gratitude  from  His 
people.^  Yet  the  popular  religion  of  Israel  did 
not  therefore  become  ethical:  on  the  contrary, 
the  prophet's  charge  against  it  was  that  it  was 
devoid  of  morality,  and  was  inspired  only  by 
formal  and  superstitious  notions  of  what  Jahweh 
required  of  the  people. 

Hence  the  prophets  who  combat  the  popular 
religion  of  Israel  declare  that  the  people  must 
form  new  notions  of  the  terms  on  which  Jahweh 
made  His  covenant,  or,  which  comes  to  the  same 
thing,  that  they  must  form  new  notions  of  Jahweh 
Himself.  The  prophets  constantly  complain  of 
the  people's  ignorance,  and  urge  them  to  knoiv 
Jahweh  Himself.  If  we  believe  the  prophets,  as 
everybody  does  believe  them,  when  they  say  that 
Israel's  relation  to  her  God  was  based  not  on 
physical  connection  with  Him,  but  upon  a  his- 
torical covenant,  we  ought  not  to  refuse  their 
further  testimony  that  this  covenanting  Deity 
had  from  the  first  revealed  His  moral  attributes. 
This  is  confirmed  by  all  we  can  gather  from 
the  genuine  records  of  Israel's  history  before 
the  prophets.  Although  we  are  uncertain 
whether   any   written   law  has  reached  us  from 

1  This  is  plain  from  the  account  which  Amos  gives  of  the 
zeal  of  the  popular  religion  in  his  day. 


I40       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND  THE 

Moses  himself,  we  cannot  but  believe,  on  the 
evidence  at  our  disposal,  in  the  existence  in 
Israel  from  his  time  onwards  of  what  was  a 
more  powerful  factor  of  ethical  development 
than  any  written  code  could  have  been :  a  con- 
sciousness of  the  character  of  the  Deity  such  as 
no  other  Semitic  people  possessed.  In  other 
words,  the  covenant  itself  was  not  the  factor 
which  told  in  early  Israel's  ethical  develop- 
ment, but  knowledge  of  the  God  behind  the 
covenant,  and  appreciation  of  His  moral  attri- 
butes. 

It  is  true  that  early  Israel's  view  of  the  Divine 
character  is  limited  and  disturbed  by  those 
ancestral  conceptions  of  Deity  which  were 
common  to  themselves  and  their  Semitic  kins- 
folk. The  first  beginnings  of  the  higher  faith 
had  to  express  themselves  in  the  language, 
through  the  symbols,  and  even  in  the  intellectual 
conceptions,  with  which  the  men  to  whom  they 
came  were  already  familiar  in  connection  with- 
religion.  The  development,  therefore,  of  what- 
ever new  ethical  principles  or  influences  met 
Israel  in  the  time  of  Moses  could  only  be 
gradual.  And  thus  the  Jahweh  of  early 
Israel  shared  much  of  the  same  character,  and 
was  believed  to  reveal  Himself  in  many  of  the 
same  forms  which  the  other  Semites  associated 
with  their  gods.  Yet  from  the  first  Israel  must 
have  seen  in  Jahweh  attributes  of  a  higher  kind 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   141 

than  any  of  their  neighbours  attributed  to   the 
Divine  character. 

We  must  observe,  too,  this  remarkable  fact: 
that  the  rapid  moral  growth  of  early  Israel  never 
runs  away  from  the  character  of  the  national 
God.  Other  ancient  nations  achieved  ethical 
progress  at  the  expense  of  their  religion.  Their 
gods  were  left  behind  and  laughed  at  as  the 
conscience  of  the  worshippers  developed.  But 
Jahweh  was  never  found  wanting  by  Israel, 
and  never  discredited  by  any  new  conception 
of  truth  or  by  any  strange  experience  in  their 
history.  Every  fresh  moral  ideal  is  confessed 
by  the  people  as  the  impression  of  His  character 
and  will;  and  for  each  new  problem  raised  by 
their  contact  with  the  world  their  faith  in  Him  is 
found  sufficient. 


Such  are  the  facts  of  the  early  religion  of 
Israel  which  the  critical  ^  study  of  it,  in  com- 
parison with  other  Semitic  religions,  presents  in 
answer  to  our  question  about  the  Old  Testament 
as  the  record  of  a  Divine  Revelation.  Are  they 
sufficient  to  prove  the  claims  of  Israel,  that  God 
Himself  spoke  directly  to  this  people  in  the 
events  of  their  national-  history  from  the  begin- 

1  That  is,  based  only  on  such  parts  of  the  Old  Testament  as 
are  admitted  by  the  textual  and  historical  criticism  of  the  Old 
Testament  to  be  evidence  of  the  pre-prophetic  religion  of  Israel. 


142        MODERN   CRITICISM  AND   THE 

ning,  and  by  the  mouths  of  their  leaders  from 
Moses  to  Elijah  ?  We  have  seen  how  thoroughly 
Semitic  the  religion  of  early  Israel  was  in  frame 
and  fibre ;  and  not  less  how  in  it  alone  of  all 
Semitic  faiths  there  dwelt  an  ethical  spirit  — 
the  only  promise  in  all  that  Semitic  world  of  a 
true  monotheism,  and  a  promise  which  was  ac- 
tually fulfilled  by  the  great  Hebrew  prophets. 
We  have  seen  how  all  attempts  to  account  for 
this  religious  uniqueness  of  Israel  by  their 
physical  or  historical  conditions  have  failed, 
because  these  conditions  were  equally  shared 
by  Israel's  Semitic  kinsfolk.  We  have  seen 
that  the  gradual  ethical  development,  which 
thus  differentiated  Israel  from  her  neighbours, 
appears  to  have  begun  with  the  introduction 
to  the  nation  of  Jahweh  as  their  God ;  and 
that  every  stage  of  its  progress  was  achieved 
in  connection  with  some  impression  of  His 
character. 

It  seems  to  me  that  there  are  here  the  lines 
of  an  apologetic,  for  a  Divine  Revelation  through 
early  Israel,  more  sure  and  clear  than  any  which 
the  traditional  interpretation  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment ever  attempted  to  lay  down.  That  is  all 
I  seek  to  prove.  There  are  those  who  refuse 
altogether  to  believe  in  the  possibility  of  the 
Christian  idea  of  Revelation  ;  and  with  them 
other  arguments  must  be  employed.  But  if  we 
are  Christians,  and  hold  that  man's  education 
in   the   knowledge  of   God  is  not  exclusively  a 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    143 

human  process,  that  the  Mind  which  our  minds, 
and  the  Heart  which  our  hearts,  seek  behind  the 
phenomena  of  nature  and  history,  cannot  be  less 
urgent  or  forward  than  our  own  in  the  desire  and 
effort  to  meet,  then  we  cannot  doubt  that  the 
history  of  early  Israel,  as  critically  interpreted, 
was  an  authentic  and  a  unique  stage  in  the 
process  of  Revelation  —  that  Israel  were  receiving 
through  their  national  God  real  impressions  of 
the  character  and  mind  of  the  Deity. 

Obviously  this  could  not  flash  upon  them  all  at 
once.  The  Revelation  of  the  Unity  of  God  and 
of  His  perfect  Holiness,  as  we  know  it,  would 
have  been  no  real  revelation  to  a  people  on  the 
level  of  Israel  from  the  fourteenth  to  the  ninth 
centuries  before  Christ.  It  would  have  hovered 
in  the  air,  out  of  reach  of  their  primitive  con- 
ceptions and  undeveloped  conscience :  impalpable, 
impossible.  Had  one  dreamed  it,  there  was  no 
language  capable  of  its  tradition.  The  character 
of  God  had  to  be  proved  upon  the  only  floor 
on  which  men  then  expected  to  see  the  interest 
of  the  Deity  in  morals:  that  is  to  say,  within 
the  narrow  limits  of  the  tribal  life  and  through 
the  tribal  institutions.  The  will  of  God,  in 
order  to  be  understood,  had  to  be  expressed, 
not  merely  in  the  spoken  dialect  of  the  people, 
but  in  the  dearer  language  of  religious  symbol 
and  sacrament,  already  consecrated  by  the  use 
of  many  generations.  The  mind  of  God  had 
to  make  its  way  to  the  mind  of  man  through 


144        MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

older  intellectual  conceptions  of  the  Deity, 
which,  as  we  have  seen,  clung  about  the  people's 
notions  of  Jahweh  for  centuries  after  Moses. 
But  just  because  of  its  adoption  of  the  practical 
realities  and  religious  symbols  of  the  life  on 
which  it  descended,  the  new  Spirit  secured  a 
habitation  in  the  mind  of  the  people  and  the 
means  of  tradition  and  development.  Among 
all  the  errors  and  limitations  which  the  past  had 
bequeathed,  the  impressions  of  the  righteous  char- 
acter of  God  worked  as  a  leaven.  They  elevated 
gradually  the  great  body  of  unwritten  custom 
and  legislation  which  Israel  had  derived  from 
their  Semitic  fathers ;  they  moulded  the  nation 
in  discipline  and  taught  them  gratitude  and 
loyalty  to  their  Head ;  they  proved  themselves 
active  beyond  the  tribal  territory  and  life;  they 
helped  the  mind  of  Israel  to  rise  to  every 
problem  which  its  widening  horizon  presented. 
But  the  divinity  of  the  process  is  vindicated 
beyond  itself.  It  carried  Israel  through  the 
crises  of  the  eighth  century,  when  every  god  of 
their  neighbours  was  discredited,  but  Jahweh 
by  the  moral  character,  slowly  revealed  as  His 
through  the  previous  ages,  was  trusted  by  His 
people  as  the  wielder  of  the  world's  forces. 
It  produced  the  monotheism  of  the  Prophets. 
And  finally  Christ  confirmed  it  as  the  gradual 
preparation  by  God  for  the  full  revelation  of 
Himself  in  the  life  and  death  of  His  Son. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   145 


LECTURE   V 

THE  SPIRIT  OF  CHRIST  IN  THE   OLD  TESTAMENT 

The  older  theologies  approached  our  present 
subject  in  a  way  different  from  that  which  I  ask 
you  to  follow.  Of  Christ  in  the  Old  Testament 
they  have  mainly  treated  under  the  heads  of 
Typology  and  Messianic  Prophecy.  These  are 
departments  of  Biblical  Doctrine  for  which  we 
have  the  warrant  of  the  New  Testament.  As 
usually  treated,  however,  they  are  either  too 
wide  or  too  narrow  for  the  illustration  of  the 
Spirit  of  Christ  under  the  Old  Covenant. 

Too  wide  —  for  to  the  preacher,  as  the  history 
of  the  Christian  pulpit  has  painfully  proved,  their 
vagueness  has  been  a  constant  temptation  to 
overdo  them.  In  their  elastic  range,  and  the 
ambiguous  quality  of  many  of  their  details,  the 
spoiled  children  of  the  pulpit  have  taken  a  larger 
licence  than  even  among  the  predictions  and 
apocalypse  of  the  New  Testament.  Venturing 
beyond  the  furthest  hint  of  the  Apostolic 
writers,  preachers  have  spun  their  allegories  of 
Christ  out  of  every  plausible  character  and  trans- 
action in  Old  Testament  history  and  poetry;  or 

K 


146       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

have  assiduously  polished  each  rite  and  institution 
of  the  Jewish  Law  in  the  attempt  to  make  it  a 
mirror  of  our  Lord  and  His  Sacrifice.  It  would 
not  be  unjust  to  call  those  mere  flatterers  of  their 
Lord,  who,  without  moral  insight  or  real  devotion, 
have  heaped  upon  Him  indiscriminately  all  the 
titles  of  Old  Testament  History,  and  symbolised 
every  detail  of  Jewish  worship  as  if  it  were  the 
ingenuity  of  their  efforts  and  the  quantity  of 
their  results  which  were  well-pleasing  to  Him,  or 
capable  of  convincing  the  doubter  of  His  Divinity. 
The  fancy,  that  to  discover  some  type  or  predic- 
tion of  Christ  where  nobody  else  had  seen  one 
before  was  to  honour  Christ  and  confound  His 
enemies,  has  been  the  besetting  sin  both  of 
mediaeval  and  of  Protestant  styles  of  exegesis; 
and  nothing  has  been  more  guilty  of  rendering 
sermons  on  the  Old  Testament  artificial  and  un- 
real. How  different  is  the  liberal  and  patient 
temper  of  Calvin  !  He  examines  every  alleged 
type  and  prediction.  He  says  this  is  *  too 
forced ' ;  that  '  too  fine.'  '  In  these  things  we 
require  not  cleverness  but  qicid  solidiini!  some- 
thing reliable,  something  sane.  And  therefore, 
when  he  does  admit  a  type  or  prophecy  of  Christ, 
he  makes  us  sure  of  it.  We  know  that  he  seeks 
to  learn  what  God  means  rather  than  to  find  what 
his  own  ingenuity  can  prove.  He  is  jealous  to 
serve  his  Lord  with  truth.^ 

1  The  same  spirit,  struggling  \Yith  far  heavier  difficulties,  is  seen 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    147 

But  if  Typology  and  Messianic  Prophecy  are 
in  some  directions  too  vague  to  show  us  Christ 
aright  in  the  Old  Testament,  in  others  they  are 
too  narrow.  There  are  many  passages  which 
breathe  His  Spirit,  and  which  have  never  been 
included  among  '  the  types  '  or  Messianic  pre- 
dictions. I  do  not  suppose,  for  instance,  that 
under  one  or  other  of  these  heads  either  the 
Song  of  Deborah  or  the  Elegy  upon  Saul  and 
Jonathan  was  ever  gathered  by  a  theologian ; 
and  indeed  Matthew  Henry,  on  the  ground  that 
the  Elegy  does  not  name  the  Name  of  God,  calls 
it  '  a  humane  composure,'  a  piece  of  non-religious 
literature.  I  hope  to  show  that  both  of  those 
early  poems  breathe  the  Spirit  of  Christ,  and 
that  this  Spirit  is  shared  by  many  other  passages, 
which  no  system  of  Typology  or  Prophecy  has 
ventured  to  include. 

Again,  every  one,  who  is  familiar  with  the 
efforts  of  Christian  preaching  to  illustrate  or 
explain  the  Sacrifice  of  Christ  from  the  Old 
Testament,  is  aware  how  the  emphasis  of  the 
argument  is  almost  always  laid  upon  the  animal 
sacrifices  of  the  Levitical  legislation,  and  how 
the  human  sacrifices  of  Old  Testament  history  — 
the  sufferings  of  the  righteous  and  the  vicarious 
strife  and   agony  of   the  heroes    of  Israel  —  are 

in  Theodore  of  Mopsuestia  (d.  429A.D.),the  greatest  Old  Testa- 
ment exegete  among  the  early  fathers  :  cf.  the  just  title  accorded 
him  in  Sieffert's  work,  T/ieod.  Mopsnestetws  Vet.  Test,  sobrie 
mterpretaiidi  Vindex  (1827).     See  below,  Lecture  vii. 


148      MODERN   CRITICISM   AND  THE 

either  forgotten  or  used  only  for  the  peroration. 
An  equal  error  has  been  made  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment argument  for  our  Lord's  Divinity:  the 
proofs  have  been  sought  in  strained  interpreta- 
tions of  the  essentially  human  attributes  and 
offices  of  the  Messianic  King,  instead  of  in  those 
affections  and  struggles  for  the  salvation  of 
men  v^^hich  the  Old  Testament  imputes  to  God 
Himself. 

The  following  Lecture  is  the  attempt  to  place 
the  whole  subject  of  the  prophecy  of  Christ  in 
the  Old  Testament  and  the  presence  of  His 
Spirit  in  the  history  of  Israel  upon  historical  and 
ethical  lines,  in  place  of  those  so  largely  followed 
by  theologians  and  preachers  in  treating  of  Typo- 
logy, Messianic  Prophecy  and  the  Argument 
from  the  Old  Testament  for  our  Lord's  Divinity 
and  His  Sacrifice. 

I.   From  the  Earliest  Times  to  David. 

We  will  most  suitably  start  upon  our  task  from 
the  point  which  was  reached  in  the  close  of  last 
Lecture.  We  saw  that  the  main  factor  in  the 
development  of  the  religion  of  Israel  was  the 
impression  upon  the  people,  through  the  events 
of  their  history  and  the  consciousness  of  their 
greatest  men,  of  the  character  of  God.  This  it 
was  which  separated  the  people  from  the  heathen 
around  them,  quickened  within  them  a  new  moral 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   149 

sense,  sifted  and  qualified  the  mass  of  custom  and 
unwritten  law  which  they  had  inherited  as  children 
of  the  great  Semitic  family,  and  finally  produced 
both  prophecy  and  the  legal  codes,  in  which  the 
principles  of  prophecy  and  the  hereditary  practice 
of  the  nation  were  together  precipitated. 

But  we  must  not  suppose  that  this  revelation 
of  the  character  of  God  was  confined  to  His 
righteousness,  or  was  even  predominantly  that 
of  His  righteousness.  That  is  one  of  the  most 
widespread  fallacies  about  the  Old  Testament. 
Mr.  Matthew  Arnold,  who  is  almost  as  brilliant 
an  instance  of  the  method  of  writing  history  by 
intuition  as  Renan  himself,  never  made  more 
manifest  the  perils  of  such  a  method  than  when 
he  defined  the  essence  of  Israel's  religion  as  a 
tendency  or  force,  not  ourselves,  which  makes 
for  righteousness.  More  patient  workers  in  the 
field  have  fallen  into  the  same  error.  Nothing  is 
more  certain  about  the  object  of  Israel's  faith 
than  first,  that  it  was  a  Person  ;  and  second,  that 
the  character  of  this  Person  was  by  no  means  only 
or  predominantly  righteousness.  Jahweh  is  as 
effectively  a  God  of  grace  as  He  is  a  God  of 
justice  ;  and  although  our  meagre  information 
requires  us  to  speak  with  caution  of  the  earliest 
period  of  Israel's  religion,  it  is  sufificiently  well- 
established  that  during  that  period  His  grace 
was  (to  say  the  least)  as  manifest  to  His  people's 
hearts,  and  as   operative  in  their  lives,  as   His 


ISO       MODERN   CRITICISM  AND   THE 

Justice :  for  the  full  expression  of  which  we 
have  to  wait  till  the  prophets.  In  this  con- 
nection criticism  has  done  no  disservice  to  the 
Christian  preacher  by  removing  from  the  pre- 
prophetic  stage  of  the  religion  the  vast  bulk  of 
the  Law;  for  it  has  thereby  left  him  the  more 
free  to  appreciate  throughout  these  long  cen- 
turies the  love  and  faithfulness  of  Israel's  God. 
Our  information,  as  I  have  said,  is  meagre,  but 
it  is  enough.  We  cannot  doubt  the  servitude 
of  Israel  in  Egypt,  nor  their  deliverance  under 
Moses,  in  obedience  as  they  believed  to  the 
impulse  of  Jahweh  ;  nor  their  sojourn  in  the 
Desert,  when,  as  water  is  spilled  upon  the  sand, 
so  Israel's  distinctive  character  might  have 
passed  from  them,  and  except  for  the  patience 
and  watchfulness  of  their  God  they  might  have 
sunk  back  into  the  nomadic  life  from  which  their 
fathers  had  sprung.  No  one  doubts  their  arrival 
in  a  land,  where  again  their  unity  might  have 
been  dissipated  amidst  the  geographical  con- 
ditions, but  a  national  career  and  destiny  became 
possible  by  their  trust  that  Jahweh,  in  spite  A 
their  frequent  unfaithfulness  to  Him,  continued  to 
preserve  and  to  lead  them.  The  notes  of  grace 
—  of  Divine  redemption  and  guidance  —  were 
thus  in  the  religion  of  Israel  from  the  very  first. 
We  may  not  have  many,  or  any,  authentic 
expressions  of  this  from  the  period  itself;  but 
after  it,  in  a  number  of  the  most  ancient  frag- 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    151 

ments  of  the  Old  Testament,  the  remembrance 
appears.  In  Deborah's  song  Jahweh's  people  are 
his  lovers}  The  good-will  of  Jahweh  to  help  His 
nation  against  their  foes  comes  as  an  inspiration 
to  Gideon.2  In  the  movement  of  ecstatic  prophecy 
which  broke  out  in  Israel  under  Samuel,  we  see 
the  power  of  the  sense  of  the  *  Ru^h '  or  Spirit 
of  Jahweh y  —  His  personal  energy  —  granted  to 
His  people  to  inspire  them  to  victory  over  their 
Philistine  oppressors.  The  movement  is  the 
passion  of  a  people  for  theh-  God,  who  affects 
them  not  only  by  His  righteousness,  the  full  force 
of  which  they  obviously  did  not  yet  comprehend, 
but  by  His  redemption  of  them  from  servitude, 
His  patience  with  their  disloyalties.  His  faith- 
fulness to  them  in  face  of  their  foes.  It  is  the 
early  Jahwist  (orElohist)  who  gives  the  proclama- 
tion to  Moses :  Jahweh^  Jahweh  a  compassionate 
and  gracious  God  sloiv  to  anger  and  plenteous  in 
mercy  and  truth?  Such  words  may  be  a  more 
explicit  sense  of  the  Divine  Law  than  the  Mosaic 
Age  in  Israel  had  achieved;  but  in  any  case 
the  germs  of  the  higher  consciousness  of  God, 
which,  as  Kuenen  admits,  were  present  in  the 
Mosaic  Age,  were  germs  of  the  consciousness 
not  of  His  justice  merely  but  still  more  of  His 

1  Judges  V.  31a.  E.  Meier,  Winter  and  Budde  reckon  this 
verse  to  be  a  later  addition  to  the  Song  of  Deborah :  '  in  the 
style  of  the  Psalms  '  (Budde) ;  but,  in  my  opinion,  on  insufficient 
grounds. 

2  Judges  vi.  II  ff.  ^  Ex.  xxxiv.  6. 


152       MODERN   CRITICISM  AND   THE 

mercy  and  faithfulness.  The  long  poem  in  the 
thirty-second  chapter  of  Deuteronomy,  which  is 
probably  not  later  than  the  eighth  century,  and 
which  so  accurately  represents  the  passage  of 
early  Israel  from  the  nomadic  life  of  the  desert 
to  the  agriculture  of  Canaan/  as  beautifully 
ascribes  it  to  Jahweh's  fatherly  providence  of 
the  nation  when 

In  a  wilderness  land  He  found  him y 

In  the  waste  and  the  howling  desert  ; 
He  encompassed  him,  yea  kept  His  eye  upon  him 

As  the  apple  of  His  eye,  so  He  zvatched  him. 
As  an  eagle  which  stirreth  his  nest, 

And fluttereth  over  his  young, 
And  spreadeth  his  wifigs  to  catch  themy 

And  beareth  them  up  on  his  pinions y 
Jahwdi  alone  was  his  leader. 

And  never  a  strange  God  was  with  him. 

The  prophets  of  the  eighth  century  are  full  of 
wonder  at  Jahweh's  love  for  Israel  and  His  choice 
of  them  to  be  His  people;  at  His  long  patience 
with  them  and  constant  forgiveness  of  their 
rebellion  and  sin.  The  elements  of  this  wonder 
cannot  be  wholly  from  the  prophetic  age;  the 
same  sense,  however  dim,  must  have  stirred 
Israel  from  the  first. 

So  at  least  we  seem  to  see  in  the  very  early 
Song  of  Deborah.     The  attraction  of  such  a  God, 

1  See  Historical  Geography  of  the  Holy  Land,  pp.  85-90. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   153 

and  the  loyalty  which  His  loyalty  calls  forth,  are 
there  represented  as  the  factors  of  the  national 
unity.  These  dozen  desert  tribes,  cursed  with 
the  incoherence  of  Semitic  life,  were  brought 
together  and  kept  together  by  their  common 
trust  in  their  Deity.  When,  after  the  settle- 
ment in  Palestine,  among  the  diverse  oppor- 
tunities which  the  broken  geography  of  the  land 
so  remarkably  affords,  they  were  tempted  to 
separate  from  their  common  interests  upon 
widely  divergent  lines  of  culture,^  it  was,  as  the 
Book  of  Judges  testifies,  not  by  a  return  to  the 
Law  that  they  were  united  but  by  the  recollec- 
tion of  their  debt  to  Jahweh.  In  Deborah's  as 
in  Gideon's  case,  memory  was  the  nurse  to  faith, 
and  the  conviction  of  His  unfaltering  desire  to 
help  them  rallied  the  people  against  their  foreign 
tyrants.  The  opening  verse  of  Deborah's  Song 
gives  us  the  whole  secret  of  the  national  inspira- 
tion in  a  tribute  of  glory  to  Jahweh : 

For  that  the  leaders  took  the  lead  in  Israel, 
For  that  the  people  offered  themselves  willingly? 
Praise  ye  Jahweh  ! 

In  the  end  of  the  Song  which  thus  grandly 
opens,  we  are  repelled  by  the  savage  exultation 
of  a  woman  over  the  treacherous  murder  of  a 
defeated  foe.     And  rightly ;  for  Christ  has  given 

1  Judges  iv.  15(5-17, 

2  The  exact  meaning  of  these  two  lines  is  obscure ;  but  their 
intention  is  plain. 


154       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

us  the  right  to  judge.  But  do  we  pay  as  much 
attention  to  the  virtues  which  are  manifest  in 
the  Song?  Nowhere  do  we  find  a  more  scathing 
exposure  of  those  who  prefer  the  material  ambi- 
tions of  Hfe,  however  legitimate,  to  the  call  of 
national  need  in  the  name  of  the  religious 
ideal ;  ^  and  nowhere  is  self-sacrifice  more  finely 
celebrated. 

Zebulun  was  a  people  that  jeoparded  their  lives 

to  the  death, 
And  Naphtali  on  the  high  places  of  the  field? 

Whatever  views  we  have  of  war  —  and  we 
are  those  who  themselves  owe  their  religious 
liberty  to  the  virtues  of  the  battlefield — let  us 
remember  what  war  did  for  Israel.  By  zvar,  says 
Jahweh  elsewhere,  /  took  you}  and  we  may 
extend  the  meaning  of  these  words  beyond  the 
mere  fact  that  so  He  helped  them  to  freedom,  to 
the  moral  assurance  that  by  the  call  to  fight  He 
redeemed  them  from  selfishness,  from  servitude 
to  material  aims,  from  schism  and  disloyalty  to 
Himself.  The  battlefield  was  the  Golgotha  of 
early  Israel.  It  was  there  that  Zebulun  and 
Naphtali  laid  down  their  lives  for  the  brethren ; 
and  there  that  the  Spirit  of  Christ  which  was 
in  Israel  from  the  beginning  won  its  earliest 
triumphs.  When  we  hear  a  Psalmist  sing  (in 
a  Psalm  for  which  there  are  more  reasons  for 

1  Judges  W-.  xtjb-i'].  2  Verse  18.  ^  Deut.  iv.  34, 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   155 

a   pre-exilic    date    than   for    any    other    in    the 

Psalter)  — 

By  tJiee  do  I  break  throiigJi  a  fence ^ 
And  by  my  God  do  I  leap  over  a  wall — 
He  maketh  my  feet  like  hinds  feet 
He  teacheth  my  hands  to  war, 
So  that  a  steel  bar  is  broken  by  my  arms. 
Thou  hast  enlarged  my  steps  tinder  me 
So  that  my  ancles  swerve  not  ^  — 

we  ought  to  remember  the  issues  at  stake  in 
Israel's  wars,  and  the  virtues  which  these  evoked. 
In  the  next  verse  the  Psalmist  gives  the  secret 
of  it  all :  Thy  gentleness  hath  made  me  great?" 
The  heroism,  the  self-sacrifice,  the  loyalty  to  the 
nation  and  to  Jahweh  were  the  warrior's  devotion 
to  the  tender  and  faithful  character  of  his  God. 

The  poem  next  earliest  to  Deborah's  Song, 
David's  Dirge  upon  Saul  and  Jonathan,  is  another 
illustration  of  the  same  Spirit.  It  is  all  the  more 
valuable  to  our  present  purpose  that  it  is  one  of 
the  few  specimens  of  the  popular  poetry  of  early 
Israel.  The  Dirge  is  not  religious  in  the  narrower 
sense  of  the  term.  It  is  without  the  name  of 
God :  it  says  no  word  of  the  service  of  the  dead, 
whom  it  praises,  to  the  religion  of  their  nation. 
And  above  all,  it  does  not  commit  their  spirits  to 
God,  nor  express  any  hope  of  a  future  life.^  On 
these   grounds  the   great  Puritan  commentator, 

1  Psalm  xviii.  29,  33,  34.  ^  Verse  35. 

8  This  will  be  dealt  with  in  the  next  Lecture. 


156       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

Matthew  Henry  —  a  man  of  firm  belief  in  the 
inspiration  of  the  Bible  and  of  rare  insight  into 
its  meaning  —  has  called  the  Dirge,  as  I  have 
already  said,  '  a  humane  composure,'  an  extract 
from  a-  book  of  popular  ballads  with  the  author- 
ship of  which  the  Holy  Spirit  has  had  nothing  to 
do.  But  Christ  has  said,  Not  every  one  that  saith 
unto  me,  Lord,  Lord;  and  again,  By  their  fruits 
shall  ye  know  them.  Judged  by  that  standard, 
the  absence  of  the  Divine  Name  from  this  poem 
will  not  prevent  us  from  appreciating  its  truly 
Christian  spirit.  The  Dirge  is  by  a  man  upon 
his  dead  enemy  and  his  dead  friend.  But  for  the 
former  there  is  no  word  save  of  generosity  and 
admiration.  Saul  had  relentlessly  hunted  David, 
and  upon  more  than  one  occasion  had  attempted 
his  life.  Latterly  he  had  been  a  bad  king 
to  Israel,  and  his  death,  with  the  defeat  it 
brought  upon  the  nation,  had  been  due  to  his 
own  errors.  David  is  not  only  silent  upon  these, 
but  remembers  nothing  of  the  persecutions  to 
which  Saul  had  subjected  him.  That  the  poem 
is  animated,  not  merely  by  a  poet's  heart  for 
the  virtues  of  a  great  man,  but  by  the  spirit  of 
personal  forgiveness  for  very  cruel  wrongs,  is 
proved  by  the  whole  attitude  of  David  to  the 
living  Saul  and  his  house.  David  spared  his 
hunter's  life,  and  showed  kindness  to  his  children. 
Criticism  has  no  doubt  to  cast  upon  the  story, 
according  to  which  the  service  of  David's  youth 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   157 

had  been  the  attempt  to  win  the  king  from  his 
evil  moods  by  skilful  playing  on  the  harp.  Here 
was  the  secret  of  David's  attitude  to  Saul  through 
the  persecution  which  he  suffered  from  him.  The 
life  of  his  tormentor,  which  he  spared  when  he 
had  the  power  to  take  it,  and  which  he  praised 
when  the  king  by  his  own  error  lay  dead  on 
Gilboa,  had  once  been  intrusted  to  him  by  Jahweh 
to  redeem  from  the  powers  of  evil  for  the  service 
of  God  and  the  people.  But  this  is  the  Spirit  of 
Christ.  Though  the  Dirge  upon  Saul  finds  no 
place  in  any  theologian's  system  of  '  types,'  it  is 
yet  one  of  the  most  beautiful  anticipations  which 
the  Old  Testament  has  to  offer  us  of  Christ's 
teaching :  But  I  say  unto  yon,  Love  your  enemies^ 
bless  them  that  curse  you,  do  good  to  them  that  hate 
you,  and  pray  for  them  that  despitefully  use  you 
and  persec2ite  you. 

These  instances  from  the  early  history  of  Israel 
are  enough  to  prove  to  you  and  me,  as  preachers 
of  the  Gospel,  that,  accepting  the  results  of  modern 
criticism,  we  shall  yet  be  sure  of  finding  across 
that  whole  stretch  of  the  Old  Testament  —  upon 
which  its  effects  have  been  most  feared,  and  where 
we  must  confess  the  life  to  be  very  rude,  the 
ethics  to  be  primitive,  and  monotheism  itself  to 
be  undeveloped  —  the  presence  of  Divine  Grace, 
of  the  Spirit  of  Christ,  and  of  the  virtues  of  for- 
givingness  and  self-sacrifice  which  these  call  forth 
in  men. 


158       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

II.    The  Prophets. 

The  teaching  of  the  Eighth-Century  Prophets 
foreshadows  the  gospel  of  Jesus  upon  its  great 
texts  of  Forgiveness ;  Repentance ;  the  Kifigdom 
of  Heaven  is  at  hand ;  and  the  coming  of  the 
Perfect  King  or  Messiah. 

Upon  the  two  first  of  these  themes  Hosea  has 
all  the  essence  of  the  evangel ;  which  indeed 
quotes  his  great  saying :  /  will  have  mercy  and 
not  sacrifice.  Through  terrible  personal  suffering 
inflicted  by  one  whom  he  loved,  Hosea  was  led 
to  understand  how  men's  sins  cost  God  more 
pain  than  anger.^  From  that  moment  the  Gospel 
of  Divine  Forgiveness  was  assured.  And  just 
because  she,  whom  the  prophet  was  himself 
moved  to  forgive  and  redeem,  was  an  individual, 
we  may  believe  that,  while  the  nation  still  con- 
tinued with  Hosea  to  be  the  unit  of  religion,  he 
planted  in  Israel's  faith  the  seeds  which  Jeremiah 
developed  of  the  confidence  that  God  too  in 
forgiveness  deals  with  the*  single  souls  of  men. 
Upon  Repentance  Hosea's  teaching  is  startlingly 
evangelical.  The  care  with  which  he  follows 
every  symptom  of  it  in  his  people ;  ^  the  ethical 
sternness  with  which  he  repels  their  easy  optimism 
regarding  it ;  '^  the  labour  he  takes  to  distinguish 
its  true  character  from  the  sorrow  of  this  world,* 

*^  Chaps,  i.-iii.    ^  v.  15,  vii.  i,  xi.  7  ff,,  xii.  6,  xiii.  7,  xiv.  i. 
3  Ch.  V.  15-vi.  6.  *  Ibid,  and  vii.  14. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    159 

and  founds  it  on  a  new  Knowledge  of  God  and 
of  His  love,i  in  short,  on  a  real  change  of  mind 
—  all  this  anticipates  in  a  wonderful  way  the 
Metanoia  of  the  Gospels  and  Epistles.^ 

Unlike  his  younger  contemporary,  Amos  cannot 
be  called  an  evangelical  prophet:  it  is  Law  rather 
than  Love  in  the  Divine  Nature  on  which  he 
dwells  ;  yet  he  too  had  his  part  in  the  evangelical 
preparation.  That  passage,  which  least  of  all 
Old  Testament  literature  looks  like  Gospel, 
the  first  and  second  chapters  of  Amos,  is  a  real 
intimation  that  the  Kingdom  is  at  hand.  It  is  the 
proclamation  of  the  truth  that  all  men  are  morally 
equal,  and  that  to  the  righteousness  of  Jahweh 
not  only  Israel,  but  every  one  of  her  heathen 
neighbours,  is  responsible.  Such  is  the  necessary 
ethical  basis  for  the  preaching  of  repentance  and 
forgiveness  to  the  Gentiles.  The  missionary 
spirit  of  Israel  will  take  centuries  yet  to  awaken ; 
but  this  is  its  womb :  this  sense,  for  the  first  time 
expressed  in  the  Old  Testament,  of  the  moral 
equality  of  all  men  before  God. 

In  Isaiah's  prophecies  we  meet  with  the  first 
of  those  descriptions  of  the  coming  King  which 
Christian  theology  regards  as  direct  predictions 
of  Christ.  The  Greek  version  of  the  very  difficult 
prophecy  of  Immanuel  is  quoted  by  St.  Matthew 

1  iv.  6,  vi.  6,  xi.  3-4,  xiil.  4. 

2  A  full  exposition  of  Hosea's  teaching  on  forgiveness  and 
Repentance  will  be  found  in  The  Book  of  the  Twelve  Prophets, 
i.  chaps,  xxi.-xxiii. 


i6o       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

as  the  statement  of  the  Birth  of  Jesus  from  the 
Virgin:^  Behold  the  Virgin  shall  be  with  child, 
and  shall  bring  forth  a  son,  and  they  shall  call 
his  name  Eimnanuel.  The  Plebrew  original  ^  is 
indefinite,  and  means  some  marriageable  woman. 
Isaiah  meant  no  more  than  that  some  one  should 
be  born  whose  character  and  hopes  should  be  proof 
that  God  was  with  His  people.  Whether  the 
promised  Unborn  was  an  individual,  or  a  future 
generation  of  Israel,  it  is  difficult  to  make  out ;  but 
probably  the  latter  is  what  Isaiah  intends.  This 
would  not  impair  the  legitimacy  of  Matthew's 
reference  of  the  prophecy  to  Jesus,  to  whom 
prophetic  descriptions  of  the  people  of  Jahweh 
are  equally  transferred  with  the  predictions  of 
their  coming  King.^  Against  the  authenticity 
of  other  Messianic  passages,  of  the  Prince  with 
the  Four  Names  and  the  Ideal  Ruler,  strong 
reasons  have  been  adduced*;  but  these  cannot 
be  regarded  as  conclusive.  The  premises  of 
the  passages  —  the  firm  hold  which  the  Davidic 
dynasty  had  secured  in  Judah,  the  memory  of 
David  himself  as  an  ideal  king,  the  need  in 
the  time  of  King  Ahaz  for  a  monarch  strong, 
just  and  loyal  to  Jahweh — were  all  present 
in   Isaiah's   day.      The    tasks    assigned    by   the 

1  Matt.  i.  22,  23. 

2  Isaiah  vii.  14. 

3  Cf.  Matthew's  application  (ii.  15)  to  Jesus  of  Hosea's  descrip- 
tion of  Israel's  call  out  of  Egypt  (xi.  i). 

*  Isaiah  ix.  6  f.  ;  xi.  1-5. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    i6i 

passages  to  the  victorious  Prince  and  righteous 
Judge  are  exactly  those  on  which  the  whole 
ministry  of  Isaiah  was  bent,  while  they  are  not 
such  as  were  necessary  in  the  Exilic  Age  to  which 
the  passages  have  been  relegated  by  some  critics.^ 
In  any  case  the  application  of  these  prophecies 
to  Jesus  Christ  must  be  made  with  discrimina- 
tion. They  have  been  too  hastily  used  as 
predictions  of  the  Godhead  of  the  Messiah.  But 
not  even  do  the  names  in  Chapter  ix.  6  f.  imply 
Deity;  while  all  the  functions  attributed  to  the 
Promised  King  are  human.  Isaiah's  Messiah 
is  an  earthly  monarch,  of  the  stock  of  David, 
and  with  offices  that  are  political,  both  military 
and  judicial.  He  is  not  the  mediator  of  spiritual 
gifts  to  his  people  :  forgiveness,  a  new  knowledge 
of  God,  and  the  like.  It  is  only  in  this,  that  he 
saves  the  people  of  God  from  destruction  and 
reigns  over  them  with  justice  and  in  the  fear  of 
God,  that  he  can  be  regarded  as  a  type  of  Jesus 
Christ.2 

1  Against  the  authenticity  of  Isaiah  ix.  6  f.  and  xi.  1-5,  see 
Hackmann,  Die  Ztikunftserwartimg  des  Jesaia,  1893;  Cheyne, 
Introduction  to  the  Book  of  Isaiah,  1895  ;  and  for  the  historical 
theory  which  relegates  all  predictions  of  the  Messiah  to  the  Exilic 
Age,  cf.  Marti,  Geschichte  der  Israel.  Religion,  p.  190 ;  and  Paul 
Volz,  Die  vorexil.  Prophetieu.  der  Messias,  1897.  On  the  other 
hand,  Driver,  Kirkpatrick,  Duhm,  Skinner,  Budde  and  a  majority 
of  critics  leave  the  passages  in  question  with  Isaiah.  For  the 
arguments  on  both  sides,  and  the  conclusion  that  those  for  the 
authenticity  are  the  stronger,  see  the  present  writer's  article  on 
*  Isaiah  '  in  Hastings's  Bible  Dictionary,  ii.  pp.  487  ff. 

2  So  the  present  writer  in  HdiSimgs's  Bible  Dictionary,  ii.491. 

L 


i62       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND  THE 

In  the  belief  that  chapters  xl.-lxvi.  of  the  Book 
of  Isaiah  were  from  himself,  Isaiah  has  been 
called  by  Christians  the  Evangelical  Prophet. 
These  chapters,  however,  we  now  know  to  be  by 
the  great  evangelist  of  the  Exile.^  To  a  gospel 
for  the  spiritual  life  of  the  individual,  Hosea 
makes  a  far  closer  approach  than  his  greater 
contemporary ;  yet  even  in  the  genuine  work  of 
Isaiah  we  find  the  elements  of  the  doctrines 
of  Grace.  Jahweh  forgives  sins,  even  the  most 
heinous  and  defiling.^  His  love  and  pity  never 
fail  His  people's  penitence.^  He  is  their  well- 
beloved,  and  constantly  cares  for  them.^  It  is  His 
passion  for  them  which  is  the  spring  and  assur- 
ance of  all  their  deliverance.^  Of  these  truths 
Isaiah  became  himself  convinced  through  his  in- 
dividual experience  of  pardon  and  of  cleansing.^ 

Isaiah,  however,  was  too  much  engaged  with 
the  fate  of  his  nation  to  become  the  preacher 
of  that  personal  religion,  of  which  the  proofs 
were  given  him  in  his  inaugural  vision.  Even 
in  the  following  century,  in  the  great  Law- 
book which  codifies  the  teaching  of  the  eighth 
century  prophets,  the  unit  of  religion  is  still 
Israel  as  a  whole.  Deuteronomy  is  the  most 
perfect  example  the  world  has  seen  of  a  sys- 
tem of   national   religion,  but  it  addresses  itself 

1  See  above,  pp.  53  f.  ^  Isa.  i.  18. 

3  Isa.  xiv.  32  ;  xxxvi.-xxxvii.  *  Isa.  v.  i  ff. 

^  Isa.  ix.  7,  etc.  ^  Isa.  vi,  5  ff. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   163 

to  the  nation.  The  individual  is  treated  only 
as  a  member  of  the  nation,  and  there  is  no 
promise  for  humanity  beyond,  nor  conscience  of 
Israel's  *  missionary '  duty  except  to  the  strangers 
who  settle  in  the  land.  Yet  the  high  monotheism 
of  the  Book,  along  with  its  tenderness  and 
humanity;  its  enforcement  (in  dependence  on 
Rosea)  of  the  love  of  God,  based  on  a  true 
knowledge  of  His  character,  and  its  care  for  the 
education  of  the  young,  secure  for  Deuteronomy 
a  place  in  the  evangelical  preparation.  Its 
influence  on  the  domestic  and  personal  religion 
of  Israel  in  all  ages  has  never  been  exceeded  by 
that  of  any  other  Book  in  the  Canon.  Our  Lord 
not  only  quoted  from  it  the  expression  of  the 
essence  of  the  Law,^  but  sustained  upon  its  words 
His  own  soul  in  the  conflict  with  Temptation.^ 
There  are  few  books  in  the  Old  Testament,  the 
regular  exposition  of  which  will  more  profit  a 
Christian  preacher  and  his  people. 

This  brings  us  to  Jeremiah,  who,  beyond  every 
other  in  the  old  dispensation,  was  the  forerunner 
of  Jesus  Christ :  and  that  both  in  his  teaching 
and  in  his  personal  experience.^ 

Jeremiah  began  his  career  as  a  prophet  about 
627,  before  the  discovery  of  Deuteronomy  in  the 

1  Matt.  xxii.  37  f . ;  Mark  xii.  29  f. ;  Luke  x.  27. 

2  Matt.  iv.  4  and  7  ;  Luke  iv.  4,  8 ;  cf.  Deut.  viii.  3 ;  vi.  13,  16; 
X.  20. 

8  He  was  expected  by  the  Jews  of  our  Lord's  day  to  return 
to  earth:  cf.  Matt.  xvi.  14,  some  say  .  .  .  Jeremias. 


i64       MODERN   CRITICISM  AND  THE 

Temple,  and  he  watched  the  progress  of  the  re- 
forms which  it  inspired  under  the  reign  of  Josiah. 
With  many  of  these  he  must  have  sympathised; 
and  he  frequently  quotes  from  the  letter  of  the 
Book.  But  besides  his  hostility  to  the  formal 
obedience  which  his  contemporaries  showed  to  the 
Law,  Jeremiah's  ideal  of  religion  was  in  advance 
of  that  of  Deuteronomy.  His  monotheism  was 
more  free  of  the  older  conceptions  of  the  Deity : 
to  him  at  last  the  idols  are  vanities  or  nothing- 
nesses,  empty  of  reality:  in  Deuteronomy  they 
are  still  subordinate  deities  whom  Jahweh  has 
assigned  to  all  the  nations  under  heaven}  We 
have  evidence  also  of  another  attitude  than  that 
of  the  Deuteronomist  to  sacrifices  and  burnt- 
offerings.  Jahweh,  according  to  Jeremiah,  gave 
no  commands  to  the  fathers  of  Israel  concerning 
these;  His  commands  were  ethical  only.'-^  We 
have  here  a  more  explicit  repetition  of  Hosea's 
text  quoted  by  Christ:  /  will  have  mercy  and 
not  sacrifice.  Hence  it  does  not  surprise  us  that 
before  the  end  of  his  ministry  Jeremiah  pro- 
claimed a  New  Covenant  (the  Deuteronomic 
being  the  old),  in  which  there  is  no  word  of 
ritual  or  sacrifice,  but  man's  communion  with 
God,  and  God's  forgiveness  of  man,  depend  on 
the  inward  knowledge,  and  acceptance,  of  God's 
ethical  revelation.  This  is  the  Covenant  which 
Christ  said  was  sealed  in  His  blood.^ 

1  Deut.  iv.  19.  2  jer.  vii.  22.  3  Luke  xxii.  20. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   165 

It  is,  however,  in  his  experience  of  the  relation 
of  the  individual  to  God  and  to  the  community, 
that  this  greatest  of  the  prophets  becomes  likest 
to  Christ.  The  experience  came  to  Jeremiah 
from  the  earliest  moments  of  his  career;  but 
it  was  developed  by  antipathy  to  the  people's 
formal  fulfilment  of  the  Deuteronomic  ideals 
of  national  religion;  it  was  confirmed  by  the 
collapse  of  these  with  the  death  of  Josiah ;  and 
it  was  slowly  articulated  in  the  gradual  decay 
of  the  nation  and  in  the  cruelties  which  the 
lonely  prophet  suffered  under  Jehoiakim  and 
Zedekiah.  The  community,  which  Isaiah  had 
described  as  inviolable,  upon  its  historical  site 
of  Zion  and  in  its  political  form  as  the  king- 
dom of  the  house  of  David,  was  about  to  be 
broken  up.  The  individual  was  being  left  to  his 
own  resources:  there  was  a  call  to  each  man 
to  save  himself.  The  monarchy,  the  nation,  the 
ritual,  the  Temple,  were  certain  of  destruction  : 
Jeremiah  could  promise  to  his  disciples  only  their 
bare  lives.i  And  to  a  man  like  Jeremiah,  such 
leadings  of  Providence  were  enforced  by  a  number 
of  religious  considerations.  As  almost  none  be- 
fore him  had  felt,  Jeremiah  knew  how  God  can 
single  out  the  individual  and  deal  with  him  apart 
from  his  family,  his  citizenship,  or  his  priesthood : 
Before  I  fanned  thee  in  the  belly  I  knew  thee^  and 
before  thou  earnest  forth  of  the  womb  I  consecrated 

1  Jer.  xlv.  5 ;  cf.  xxi.  9 ;  xxxviii.  2 ;  xxxix.  18. 


i66       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

thee?-  By  temper  the  man  was  solitary,  intro- 
spective, greatly  concerned  about  himself.  His 
nation,  too,  deserved  nothing  of  him ;  they  had 
betrayed  his  God,  they  refused  to  listen  to  his 
word,  and  they  cast  him  off.  What  a  conspiracy 
of  temptation  was  here  to  break  away  from  the 
community,  to  assert  a  purely  individual  religion, 
to  save  one's  own  soul  out  of  so  manifestly 
doomed  a  dispensation  !  Jeremiah  tells  us  how  he 
felt  the  strain.  At  one  time  he  prayed  for  some 
far-off  caravanserai  of  wayfaring  men,  where  he 
could  be  separate  from  his  own  people  and  no 
longer  responsible  for  their  life.^  At  another,  his 
countrymen  put  him  in  prison  lest  he  should 
desert  to  the  Babylonians  ;2  and  at  another  the 
Babylonians  offered  him  a  place  among  them- 
selves.* But  God  kept  Jeremiah  to  a  more 
excellent  way,  and  he  had  scarcely  found  his 
position  before  God  as  an  individual,  independent 
of  every  rite  and  relation,  or  realised  his  opportuni- 
ties as  an  individual,  when  there  descended  upon 
him  a  sense  of  his  oneness  with  his  people  far  more 
stringent  than  ever  prophet  had  felt  it  before  —  a 
sympathy  with  their  sufferings  which  breaks  out 
in  the  most  pathetic  cries  in  all  literature ;  and 
a  conscience  of  their  sins,  which  astounds  and 
perplexes  him  beyond  the  power  of  articulate 
expression.     Jahweh,  thou  hast  beguiled  me  and 

1  Jer.  i.  5.  2  jei-,  ix.  2. 

8  Jer.  xxxvii.  13  ff.  *  Jer.  xl.  4  ff. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    167 

/  am  beguiled:  thou  art  stronger  than  I.  WJiy 
is  my  pain  perpetual  and  my  wound  incurable  ? 
Art  tJiott  altogether  become  to  me  as  a  liar,  and  as 
waters  that  fail? '^  His  perplexity  is  his  personal 
experience  of  the  sufferings  of  the  righteous 
through  the  wrongdoing  of  the  wicked.  Only  let 
me  put  before  Thee  certain  questions  of  justice : 
Why  is  the  way  of  the  wicked  fortimate,  and  how 
are  they  happy  who  deal  treacherously  ?  Thou 
plantest  them :  they  take  root  and  flourish  and 
bring  forth  fruit.  Thou  art  familiar  in  their 
mouths,  but  very  far  from  their  reins.  Yet  Thou, 
O Jahwehy  knowest  me:  Thou  seest  7ne  and  triest 
my  heart  towards  Thyself?  It  is  a  darker,  a  more 
bewildered  heart  in  Gethsemane :  though  it  says 
Thy  will  be  done  in  its  own  way,  Thou  hast  right, 
O  Jahweh^  it  does  not  understand  the  meaning 
of  its  burden  and  its  cross. 

A  later  generation,  however,  awoke  to  the 
virtue  of  Jeremiah's  pain.  Whether  the  figure  of 
the  Suffering  Servant  in  the  fifty-third  of  Isaiah 
be  intended  by  the  writer  as  an  individual  (as  it 
seems  to  me  we  ought  to  conclude),*  or  (in  the 
opinion  of  most  modern  critics)  as  a  personifica- 
tion of  the  righteous  and  suffering  remnant  of 
Israel,  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  vision  is  partly 
inspired    by   the    nation's    appreciation    of    the 

1  Jer.  XX.  7;  XV.  18.  ^  xii.  1-3.  3  xii.  i, 

*  Both  from  the  grammar  and  by  the  fact  that  Jeremiah's  in- 
dividual experience  is  reflected  in  it. 


i68       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

meaning  of  Jeremiah's  life.  They  had  awakened 
to  this  through  their  own  experience.  God's 
doom  had  fallen  on  a  generation  not  more  guilty 
than  their  fathers ;  it  had  covered  the  righteous 
as  well  as  the  sinners.  Innocent  children  had 
been  born  into  it,  and  a  whole  generation  had 
grown  up  in  exile  under  a  curse  which  they 
had  not  earned. 

Our  fathers  have  sinned  and  are  noty 
And  we  have  borne  their  iniquities} 

It  was  out  of  this  actual  experience  of  the 
reality  of  vicarious  suffering  as  part  of  life 
and  of  the  providence  of  God,  that  the  great 
evangelical  truths  of  the  fifty-third  of  Isaiah 
were  developed.  The  Exile  had  brought  Israel 
face  to  face  with  the  heathen  world,  and  while 
they  received  chastisement  from  their  tyrants 
they  were  conscious  of  their  religious  superiority 
to  these.  In  their  despair  before  the  world,  there 
gradually  awoke  the  sense  of  a  capacity  to  serve 
it;  there  was  aroused  a  new  appreciation  of 
an  old  call.  Israel  was  Jahweh's  Servant  and 
Messenger  to  mankind.  His  exile  was  the 
punishment  of  his  refusal  of  this  mission.^ 
But  it  was  also  a  new  opportunity  for  obedi- 
ence ;  and  in  so  far  as  those  upon  whom  the 
exile  had  fallen  were,  as  individuals,  innocent, 
could  it  not  be  said  that  the  pains  of  the  Exile 

1  Lam.  V.  7. 

2  Which  thought  is  developed  by  the  later  Book  of  Jonah. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   169 

fulfilled  some  higher  religious  end  than  the  pun- 
ishment of  Israel,  and  were  themselves  part  of 
Israel's  work  for  the  world  ?  Israel  had  been 
blind  and  deaf/  and  therefore  Jahweh  had  given 
him  to  the  spoilers.  But  now  my  Servant  is 
wise :  he  understands  his  mission  and  the  mean- 
ing of  his  sufferings,  and  (so  the  pregnant  phrase 
implies)  shall  succeed.^  Thus  in  the  meeting  of 
the  old  memory  of  a  call  to  the  service  of 
Jahweh,  and  the  fresh  experience  of  the  suffer- 
ings of  the  righteous,  there  was  born  that  con- 
ception of  One  sent  from  God,  righteous  and 
blameless ;  misunderstood  by  the  world  and 
deemed  to  be  lying  under  God's  displeasure; 
by  whose  sufferings  sinful  men  are  redeemed, 
and  by  whose  stripes  they  are  healed. 

Side  by  side  with  these  beliefs  in  the  efficacy 
of  vicarious  suffering,  which  were  derived  by 
Israel  from  her  experience  of  life,  there  grew 
up  a  reconstruction  of  the  ritual  and  the  priest- 
hood, in  which  the  ideas  of  atonement  and 
cleansing  for  sin  replaced  to  a  large  degree  those 
more  peaceful  and  joyous  feelings  of  communion 
with  God  which  govern  the  conception  of  sacri- 
fice in  Israel's  earlier  codes.  The  fifty-third  of 
Isaiah  speaks  of  the  human  Servant  of  Jahweh 
as  bearing  the  sins  of  the  people,  efificaciously 
removing  them,  and  so  giving  his  life  a  guilt- 
offering   for   many.     This  guilt-offering  was  the 

1  Isaiah  xlii.  19.  2  Isaiah  Hi.  13. 


170       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

central  rite  of  the  new  system  of  ritual :  in  which 
sin  was  said  to  be  borne  and  expiated  by  the 
death  of  beasts  representative  of  those  who 
offered  them. 

It  has  been  argued  by  some  ^  that  there  is  no 
idea  of  substitution  in  the  animal  sacrifices  of 
the  Levitical  Law,  but  that  their  offering  is 
simply  an  act  of  penitence.  The  argument  is 
far  from  conclusive,  and  its  authors  have  to 
admit,  both  that  the  human  conscience  has  else- 
where (though  not  universally)  associated  substi- 
tution with  animal  sacrifice,  and  that  there  are 
at  least  echoes  of  this  in  the  Jewish  system. 
Nevertheless,  there  is  a  truth  underlying  the 
opinion.  The  idea  of  vicarious  suffering  and 
substitution  of  the  innocent  for  the  guilty, 
whereby  the  guilty  are  redeemed  from  their  sin, 
is  to  be  traced  not  to  those  animal  sacrifices  of 
the  Levitical  ritual,  but  rather  to  the  nobler 
source  of  human  vicariousness  and  its  virtue, 
as  learned  by  Israel  from  their  own  experience, 
and  idealised  in  the  Suffering  Servant  of  Jah- 
weh,  whose  prototypes  are  Jeremiah  and  the 
righteous  remnant.  In  such  human  instances 
we  get  the  ethical  truth  of  vicariousness  :  red  with 
the  blood  of  real  life.  In  the  animal  sacrifices  the 
expression  of  the  idea  is  largely  mechanical. 

Unfortunately,  both  in  Jewish  and  in  Christian 
theology,  it  has  been  the  sacrificial  animals  and  not 

1  E.g.  Schultz,  Old  Testafne7it  Theology. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   171 

the  human  Servant,  Law  and  not  Prophecy,  which 
have  governed  the  conceptions  of  atonement  for 
sin.  Symbol  and  ritual  were  among  ancient 
people  the  best  vehicle  for  the  tradition  of  ideas, 
and  therefore  we  can  understand  why,  till  our 
Lord's  time,  the  truths  we  are  treating  should 
find  their  favourite  popular  expression  in  the 
forms  of  animal  sacrifice,  and  why  Christ  Him- 
self should  associate  His  supreme  Self-Sacrifice 
with  the  Paschal  Lamb.  But  even  the  author 
of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  who  dwells  more 
than  any  other  New  Testament  writer  upon  the 
Levitical  antitypes  of  Christ,  shows  their  in- 
sufficiency, and  precedes  his  exposition  of  them 
by  majestic  emphasis  on  the  humanity  of  Christ 

—  as  distinct  from  an  official  priesthood  —  and  by 
illustration  of  this  from  those  human  aspects  of 
vicarious  service  in  the    Old   Testament   which 
fill  his  opening  chapters.     This  example,  unfor- 
tunately for  Christianity,  has  been  misunderstood 

—  not  by  the  greatest  theologians  but  by  the 
smaller  ones,  and  by  generation  after  generation 
of  popular  preachers.  It  is  because  Christian 
divines  have  dwelt  too  much  on  the  Old  Testa- 
ment system  of  sacrifices  and  too  little  upon  the 
figures  of  Jeremiah,  the  suffering  remnant  and 
the  Servant  of  the  Lord :  too  much  upon  the 
animal  types  of  the  Cross  and  too  little  upon 
the  human__.forerujiners_of_^hrist :  that  their 
explanations   of  the   vicarious   character   of  the 


172       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND  THE 

passion  and  death  of  the  Redeemer  have  so 
often  been  mechanical  and  repulsive.  Certainly 
in  our  day,  when  animal  sacrifices  have  so  long 
ceased  to  speak  to  the  imagination  and  con- 
science of  men,  it  is  the  direst  blunder  a  preacher 
may  commit  to  dwell  upon  them  except  for  the 
barest  of  exegetical  purposes.  If  we  are  to 
get  our  fellows  to  believe  in  the  redemptive 
virtue  of  Christ's  Cross,  it  will  be  by  proving 
to  them  that  vicarious  suffering  and  its  ethical 
virtue  are  no  arbitrary  enactments  of  God,  but 
natural  to  life  and  inevitable  wherever  sin  and 
holiness,  guilt  and  love,  encounter  and  contend. 
*  Non  est  dolor  nisi  de  amore  amisso,  quanto 
profundior  erat  amor  tanto  altius  tangit  dolor.'  ^ 
And  in  this  we  shall  succeed  most  readily  by 
proving,  as  we  can  do  from  the  history  which 
we  have  been  traversing,  that  the  figure  of  a 
Sufferer,  holy  and  undefiled,  by  whose  stripes  we 
are  healed,  by  whose  bearing  of  our  iniquities 
we  are  justified,  was  desired  and  confidently 
expected  by  men,  not  because  Heaven  had 
arbitrarily  proclaimed  it,  but  out  of  their  own 
experiences  of  life  and  death,  the  very  elements 
of  which  provided  them  with  their  marvellous 
picture  of  Him. 

The  Levitical  system,  however,  was  not  wholly 
animal  or  mechanical.  The  head  and  centre  of 
it  was  human,  the  Great  or  High  Priest  who  first 

1  Hugo  St.  Victor,  on  Gen.  vi.  6. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   173 

appears  in  Hebrew  history  with  the  Return  from 
the  Exile.     In  the  visions  of  Zechariah,^  he  car- 
ries the  guilt  of  the  whole  people  before  God  and 
receives  their  pardon ;    in  the  Levitical  Law  he 
enters  within  the  veil  as  their  representative  on 
the  Day  of  Atonement.^     At  first  of  equal  rank 
with   the  native  governor  of   Israel,^  the   High 
Priest  assumed  gradually  much  of  the  civil  and 
judicial  power,  till  he  became  King  as  well  as 
Priest,  and  thus  besides  gathering  upon  his  person 
the  virtue  of  the  sacrificial  system,  represented 
also  the  poUtical  Messiah  of  the  earlier  prophets. 
It  is  unnecessary  to  follow  in  detail  the  influence 
of   this  Figure  upon  the  theology  of   the   New 
Testament  and  the  constitution  of  the  Christian 
Church.     We  shall  see  in  a  later  Lecture,  how  a 
merely  official  and  unhistorical  interpretation  of 
the  double   office   was   employed   to   defend  the 
temporal  government  of  the  Popes>      How  in- 
finitely different  is  the  human  and  ethical  High 
Priesthood  claimed  for  Jesus  by  the  author  of  the 
Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  !     Here  there  is  nothing 
official,  nothing  of  a  secular  sovereignty.     Jesus, 
though   the   Son   of  God   and   natural   head   of 
mankind,  enters  upon    His   priesthood  through 
the  voluntary  assumption  of  human  nature  and 
fellowship  with  all  its  suffering  and  temptation. 
The  name  of  His  great  office  is  borrowed  from 

1  Ch.  iii.  '  Levit.  xvi. 

8  So  in  Haggai  and  Zechariah.  *  See  Lecture  vii. 


174       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

the  Law ;  but  its  character  and  virtue  are  drawn 
from  the  prophet's  picture  of  the  suffering  servant 
of  the  Lord. 

But  the  Spirit  of  Christ  in  the  Old  Testament 
is  not  exhausted  even  in  its  greatest  human 
figures  ;  whether  the  Messiah  of  the  earher  pro- 
phets, the  Suffering  Servant  of  the  later,  or  the 
High  Priest  of  the  Levitical  system.  We  must 
seek  another  line  than  these  supply  for  the  full 
prophecy  of  the  Incarnation.  Parallel  to  that 
prospect  of  the  blessed  future,  which  finds  its  goal 
in  the  appearance  of  a  human  Saviour  now  reign- 
ing over  His  people  and  now  suffering  with  them 
and  bearing  their  sins,  there  runs  through  all  the 
Prophets  another  line  of  vision  the  end  of  which 
is  the  appearance  of  God  Himself  and  Alone  — 
either  undertaking  His  people's  deliverance  from 
their  enemies  or  reigning  over  them  in  visible 
majesty.  The  human  Messiah,  whom  the  earlier 
prophecies  of  Isaiah  predict,  disappears  from  the 
later  and  God  is  all  in  all.^  In  Jeremiah,  Jahweh 
Himself  is  His  people's  Righteousness?  that  is 
their  full  and  manifest  vindication  in  history. 
In  the  prophecy  which  most  critics  assign  to 
some  disciple  of  \s2^2ki  Jahweh  will  be  for  us  in 
majesty.  For  Jahweh  is  our  Judge  ^  our  Lawgiver y 
our  King :  He  will  save  us?  At  each  great  crisis 
in  Israel's  history,  the  Eternal  will  appear,  as  for 

1  See  article  '  Isaiah '  in  Hastings's  Bible  Dictionary,  vol.  ii. 

2  Jer.  xxxiii.  i6.  ^  Isa.  xxxiii.  21,  22. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   175 

instance  He  is  pictured  in  an  exilic  or  post-exilic 
vision^  treading  the  wine-press  of  battle,  and 
the  blood  of  His  people's  foes  stains  all  His  rai- 
ment. With  such  theophanies  we  may  take  the 
very  numerous  passages  of  the  Old  Testament 
which  attribute  to  the  Deity  effort  and  passion 
of  the  most  violent  kind,  describe  Him  in  the 
similitude  of  a  man  of  war,  Israel's  champion  and 
protagonist,  and  do  not  even  hesitate,  as  in  one 
instance,^  to  picture  Him  as  a  woman  in  travail. 
All  these  anthropomorphisms,  as  they  are  called, 
are  not  to  be  interpreted  as  the  mere  effort  of 
their  writers'  art  to  make  the  unseen  vivid  to  the 
imagination  of  a  rude  people.  We  are  to  see 
in  them  the  expression  of  what  all  the  Prophets 
felt  to  be  the  essence  of  the  Divine :  the  truth  . 
that  God  makes  His  people's  salvation  His  own  \ 
concern  and  effort,  and  accomplishes  this  not  in  ; 
power  only  but  in  pain  and  self-sacrifice.  The 
sins  and  sorrows  of  men  are  not  only  set  in  the 
light  of  His  countenance,  but  He  bears  them 
upon  His  heart.^  His  righteousness  is  not  only 
regnant  but  militant.  He  rises  and  comes  dowftj 
entering  His  people's  war  with  their  enemies  on 
a  level  of  struggle  equal  with  themselves.  His 
love  is  not  only  complacent  but  sympathetic, 
passionate,  self-sacrificing:   m  all  their  affliction 

1  Isa.  Ixiii.  1-6.  2  iga.  xHi.  13,  14. 

3  Isa.  xl.-lxvi.  uses  the  same  verb  ^5^  ''^  bear,  meaning  to  bear 
with  pain  and  difficulty  of  God  and  of  the  Servant  of  God. 


176       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

He  is  afflicted.  He  pleads  for  their  loyalty; 
reasons  with  them  in  their  sins ;  travails  for  their 
new  birth  and  their  growth  in  holiness ;  and 
is  longstiffering  with  their  sinfulness  and  their 
ignorance.^ 

It  is  very  evident,  therefore,  that  the  essence 
of  the  truth  about  God's  love  and  the  perfection 
of  that  love  in  suffering,  which  Christ  manifested 
and  which  is  the  glory  of  the  Christian  doctrine 
of  the  Incarnation,  was  already  conceived  and 
expressed  by  the  Prophets. 

The  Spirit  of  Christ  in  the  Old  Testament  is 
not  confined  to  its  human  heroes  and  ideals :  the 
length  and  the  breadth,  the  height  and  the  depth 
of  it  belong  to  the  Old  Testament's  revelation 
of  God  Himself. 

1  The  substance  of  this  passage  will  be  found  in  an  article  by 
the  present  writer  on  'The  Messianic  Prophecies  '  in  a  little  volume 
of  aids  to  Bible  teachers,  published  by  Messrs.  Collins  of  Glasgow. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   177 


LECTURE   VI 

THE   HOPE   OF  IMMORTALITY  IN  THE  OLD 
TESTAMENT 

We  now  turn  to  as  fascinating,  and  at  first  sight 
as  perplexing,  an  aspect  of  our  subject  as  we 
have  yet  encountered:  the  attitude  of  Israel  and 
their  Scriptures  to  a  future  life. 

Every  one  knows,  at  least  in  outline,  what  that 
attitude  is.  For  the  most  part  the  writers  of 
the  Old  Testament  display  towards  the  future 
of  the  individual  beyond  the  grave  a_steady 
indifFerence ;  which  is  the  more  striking  that  it 
persists  among  lavish  and  brilliant  hopes  for  the 
earthly  future  of  the  nation.  The  references  to 
a  personal  immortality  in  the  presence  of  God 
are  exceptional.  In  the  historical  Books  they  are 
limited  to  two  heroes  of  the  nation ;  in  the  pro- 
phets they  do  not  occur;  in  the  Psalms  and  the 
Book  of  Job  they  consist  of  a  few  cries  of  con- 
fidence that  the  believer  in  God  can  never  be 
separated  from  Him.  Otherwise,  the  life  be- 
yond the  grave  is  pictured  as  a  cheerless,  dusty, 
underground   reflection  of   the  mere  surface  of 

M 


178       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

human  existence,  but  without  God  or  hope ;  from 
the  ultimate  certainty  of  which  the  believer 
seeks  a  respite  by  prayers  for  a  long  earthly  life, 
and  the  fulness  of  God's  favour  so  long  as  this 
lasts. 

Such  is  the  impression  which  the  Old  Testa- 
ment makes  upon  those  who  search  it  for  a 
gospel  of  immortality.  It  is  our  first  duty  to 
discover,  by  an  examination  of  the  details, 
whether  this  impression  is  a  just  one.  If  we 
prove  it  so,  we  have  next  to  inquire  what  are 
the  historical  reasons  for  so  singular  an  attitude 
towards  the  life  to  come.  And  finally  we  must 
determine  the  practical  value  of  Israel's  faith  in 
this  matter  to  the  preacher  of  to-day. 

I.    The  Old  Testament  Data. 

In  the  historical  portions  of  the  Pentateuch  — 
which  it  is  not  necessary  to  separate  into  their 
various  strata,  for  towards  this  subject  their  atti- 
tude is  remarkably  alike  —  death  is  as  busy  as 
elsewhere  in  the  world,  and  men  are  as  busy 
caring  for  their  dead.  When  Sarah  dies  Abraham 
buys  a  sepulchre  of  the  sons  of  Heth,  and  in 
time  is  himself  buried  there  with  Isaac  his  son. 
Jacob  loses  Rachel  by  the  way,  and  by  the  way 
lays  her  to  rest  as  tkoji  contest  to  Ephrath,  His 
own  body  is  embalmed  in  Egypt  and  buried 
in  Macpelah.  Joseph's  body  is  embalmed  and 
carried  by  Israel  all  over  the  wilderness  that  it 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    179 

too  may  lie  in  the  Promised  Land.  Aaron  and 
Moses  come  to  the  end  of  their  long  years  and 
are  laid,  the  one  in  a  known,  the  other  in  an 
unknown,  sepulchre.  These  are  the  great  per- 
sonalities, yet  neither  for  all  their  greatness  do 
they  project  themselves  beyond  death,  nor  for 
all  their  closeness  here  to  God  do  they  crave 
from  Him  another  life,  nor  in  spite  of  the  affec- 
tion and  reverence  which  surround  them  to  the 
last,  and  the  scrupulous  care  which  is  taken  for 
their  proper  burial,  is  there  any  hope  expressed 
of  their  continued  existence.  Abraham,  when 
God  promises  to  be  his  great  reward,  is  anxious 
only  for  an  heir  of  his  own  body ;  ^  and  when  his 
wife  dies  is  busy  only  to  procure  her  a  grave  in 
the  soil  promised  to  his  descendants.^  A  living 
seed  and  a  land  for  them  to  dwell  in  —  that  is  all 
that  Abraham's  story  contains  of  gospel  for  the 
future.  Similarly,  the  last  words  imputed  to 
Jacob  are  fraught  with  hope  only  for  the  tribes 
which  have  sprung  from  him,  and  for  their  settle- 
ment in  Canaan  :  Lo,  I  am  dying y  but  God  will  be 
with  you  and  bring  you  back  to  the  land  of  your 
fathers?  For  himself  there  is  the  prospect  of 
Sheol ;  he  is  eager  that  he  be  not  brought  down 
there  in  grief.  The  inference  is  that  the  state  in 
which  a  man  enters  Sheol  is  his  state  for  ever- 

1  Gen.  XV.  i  ff. 

2  Gen.  xxiii. ;  see  especially  verse  8 :  to  burymy  dead  out  of  my 
sight. 

3  Gen.  xlviii,  21 ;  cf.  xlix. 


i8o       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

more.^  For  Joseph  the  last  hope  is  a  grave  with 
his  people  in  Canaan,^  and  for  Moses  a  prospect 
of  Canaan  on  the  eve  of  the  nation's  occupation.^ 
Even  though  God  Himself  prepares  a  sepulchre 
for  the  body  of  the  friend  who  spake  with  Him 
face  to  face,*  nothing  is  said  of  a  future  for  Moses 
with  God.  All  men,  small  and  great,  loved  or 
hated,  come  under  the  curse  upon  their  first 
parents  :  dust  thou  arty  and  unto  dust  thou  shaft 
return!^  There  is  but  one  exception,  the  mysteri- 
ous story  of  Enoch,^  which,  however,  describes 
not  life  after  death,  but  a  translation  without 
death  to  the  presence  of  God.^ 

1  Gen.  xxxvii.  35;  xlii.  38;  xliv.  31.  ^  Gen.  1.  24-26. 

8  Deut.  xxxii.  52.  *  Ex.  xxxiii.  ii. 

^  Gen.  iii.  19.  ^  Gen.  v.  23  f. 

'^  I  have  said  above  that  it  is  not  necessary  in  this  review  of 
the  historical  portions  of  the  Pentateuch  to  distinguish  between 
the  strata  from  different  periods,  for  the  testimony  of  all  is  alike. 
Here,  however,  are  the  exact  references.  It  is  the  Jahwist  and 
Elohist  who  give  us  the  confinement  of  Abraham's  hopes  to 
descendants  from  his  own  body  (Gen.  xv.  i  ff.) ;  the  death  of 
Rachel  (xxxv.  19)  ;  Jacob's  dread  of  Sheol  (xxxvii.  35,  xlii.  38, 
xliv.  31),  and  his  hopes  for  his  descendants  (xlviii.  21 ;  cf.  xlix.)  ; 
the  burial  of  Jacob  (1.  1  ff.),  and  Joseph's  last  charge  (1.  24) ;  the 
death  of  Moses:  the  time  draws  near  that  thou  must  die  (Deut. 
xxxi.  14)  :  thou  shalt  sleep  with  thy  fathers  (ver.  16) :  this  is  the 
land,  to  thy  seed  will  I  give  it,  but  thou  shalt  not  pass  over  thither. 
So  Moses  died  (xxxiv.  4,  5) ;  Joshua's  death  and  Joseph's  burial 
(Josh.  xxiv.  29  f.). 

The  Deuteronomists  add  few  details  relevant  to  our  subject : 
Moses  must  not  enter  Canaan  (Deut.  iii.  23  ff.,  iv.  22) ;  his  death 
and  burial  (xxxiv.  5  f.)  (it  is  doubtful  whether  Jahweh  is  described 
as  Himself  burying  his  servant ;  see  Dillmann  and  Driver  on  the 
passage).  The  Priestly  Writers  give  us  the  story  of  Enoch  (Gen. 
v.  23,  24) ;  of  Macpelah  (xxiii.) ;  the  death  of  Abraham  (xxv.  7  f.) ; 
of  Ishmael  (ver.  17);  of  Isaac  (xxxv.  29);  of  Jacob  (xlix.  2i^\  his 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   i8i 

So,  too,  in  the  historical  books  which  follow 
the  Hexateuch.  Soldiers  on  the  battlefield,  kings 
in  the  midtime  of  their  career,  the  innocent 
child,  the  only  son  of  his  mother,  the  friend 
whose  love  was  wonderful  passing  the  love  of 
women,  the  righteous  man,  the  faithful  prophet, 
the  martyr  —  they  are  mourned  and  bewept,  but 
never  a  word  of  hope  is  spoken  regarding  them. 
As  in  the  Pentateuch,  there  are  traces  of  a 
popular  belief  in  an  underground  abode  of  the 
dead,  where  these  preserve  the  characters  they 
bore  in  life  and  whence  they  may  be  summoned 
to  speak  to  the  living.  But  that  world  is  outside 
of  religion;  the  traffickers  with  it  are  wizards 
and  necromancers,  whom  the  servants  of  Jahweh 
seek  to  drive  from  the  land.^  There  is  again 
as  in  the  Pentateuch,  a  single  hero,  who  escapes 
this  subterranean  fate  by  escaping  death,  and  is 
translated  to  Heaven  i^  but  Elijah  in  his  fiery 
chariot  is  no  revelation  of  a  future  with  God  for 
the  common  man.  Some  women  receive  their 
dead  raised  to  life  again.  There  are  stories  of 
prophets  who  bring  back  the  breath  to  the  bodies 

burial  (1. 12, 13).  Nadab  and  Abihu  die  before  Jahweh  (Lev.  x.  2); 
death  of  Aaron  on  the  top  of  the  mountain  (Num.  xx.  22  ff.) ; 
death  of  Moses  (Deut.  xxxii.  48  ff.)  (with  the  reason  why  Moses 
died  in  Moab  before  the  entry  into  Canaan),  xxxiv.  \b,  2,  ^a,  8. 
It  is  the  Priestly  Writer  who  uses  the  phrases  gathered  to  his 
people  (Gen.  xxv.  7  f.  17,  xxxv.  29,  xlix.  33)  ;  to  the  men  of  his 
people  (Num.  xx.  24) ;  to  thy  people  (Deut.  xxxii.  50). 

1  I  Sam.  xxviii.  7  ff. 

2  2  Kings  ii.  11. 


i82       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

of  those  who  have  expired.^  But  even  the  faith 
that  Jahvveh's  love  and  omnipotence  can  work 
such  miracles  provokes  no  single  expression  of 
hope  that  He  will  redeem  the  dead  to  eternal 
life  in  His  presence. 

The  darkness  is  nowhere  more  impressive 
than  over  the  Dirge  of  David  upon  Saul.  The 
verses  of  this  noble  elegy  throb  with  the  joy  of 
life  :  the  flash  of  the  sword,  the  glint  of  gold,  the 
sheen  of  scarlet,  and  the  beauty  and  strength 
of  men.  They  praise  the  services  of  the  dead 
to  the  country  and  nation.  They  are  inspired, 
as  we  have  seen,^  with  the  feeling  for  greatness 
and  the  spirit  of  generous  forgiveness.  But 
none  of  these  light  one  spark  of  the  life  to 
come.  The  poetry,  the  reverence,  the  love  of 
the  elegy  are  perfect;  but  it  breathes  no  hope. 
We  recognise,  of  course,  that  the  soul  has  her 
hours  sacred  to  grief;  when  even  God  in  His 
great  patience  stands  aside  and  leaves  the  broken 
heart  alone  with  its  dead.  Yet  this  can  hardly 
be  the  explanation  of  the  absence  from  David's 
song  of  the  name  of  God  and  of  every  hint  of 
another  life ;  for  nowhere  else  in  all  the  story 
that  surrounds  the  song  do  we  find  any  promise, 
or  even  instinct,  of  immortality  for  man.  When 
Abigail  says  to  David  :  May  the  life  of  my  lord 
be  botmd  up  in  the  bundle  of  life  with  Jahweh 
Gody  it  is  of  this  life  she  is  talking,  for  she  has 

1  I  Kings  xvii.  17  ff. ;  2  Kings  iv.  32  £f.     2  Above,  pp.  155  ff. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    183 

just  said,  Should  a  man  rise  up  to  Jiunt  thee  and 
seek  thy  life,  and  she  immediately  adds,  but  the 
lives  of  thine  e?iemies  may  He  sling  them  out  as 
from  the  middle  of  a  sling}  Life  was  here,  for 
Jahweh  was  here.  When  men  died  they  were 
gathered  to  their  fathers?  It  is  a  sweet  phrase ; 
but  it  had  no  religious  hope  till  Christ  put  this 
into  it.^  Sheol  was  the  abode  of  the  dead,  not 
of  God,  and  as  in  the  Pentateuch,  so  in  these 
historical  books,  men  went  down  into  Sheol  with 
such  sorrow  or  blood,  as  fell  upon  the  end  of  their 
lives,  irremovable  from  them.* 

Before  we  pass  from  the  historical  books,  one  bit 
of  evidence  for  belief  in  the  continued  existence 
of  the  dead  must  be  noted.  It  has  been  thought 
by  critics  that  Scripture  contains  proofs  of  the 
existence,  in  the  earlier  history  of  Israel,  of  the 
worship  of  the  dead.  Both  in  the  Elohist's 
story  of  Jacob,  and  in  the  life  of  David,  mention 
is  made  of  certain  Teraphim  or  images  of  gods, 
and  these  are  elsewhere  described  in  connection 
with  oracles.^  They  were  probably  family  gods  ;  ^ 
the  inference  that  they  were  the  ancestors  of  the 

1  I  Sam.  XXV.  29. 

2  And,  as  in  David's  case,  to  the  child  that  preceded  him 
(2  Sam.  xii.  23). 

3  Cf.  Ps.  xlix,  2  with  Matt,  xxii.  32  ;  Mark  xii.  27  ;  Lukexx.  38. 

4  Gen.  xxxvii.  35,  xlii.  38;  2  Sam.  xii.  23. 

5  Jud.  xvii.  5,  xviii.  14 ;  Hos.  iii.  4 :  cf.  Zech.  x.  2 ;  Ezek. 
xxi.  21. 

6  Cf.  Laban's  statement  (Gen.  xxxi.  30),  and  Micah's  (Jud. 
xviii.  24). 


1 84       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

family  is  not  unnatural,  and  is  supported  by 
traces  of  a  habit  of  sacrificing  to  the  dead  which 
appear  in  mourning  customs  forbidden  to  Israel 
by  the  later  law  as  alien  to  the  religion  of  Jahweh.^ 
The  evidence  is  not  conclusive,  though  sufficient 
for  more  than  probability .^  But  in  any  case  it 
points  to  a  popular  belief  in  the  continued 
existence    of    souls    after    death.      These   were 

1  Deut.  xiv.  I  ;  xxvi,  14 ;  Lev.  xxi.  5. 

2  See  Stade,  Gesc/i.  des  Volkes  Isr.,  i.  467 ;  Schwally,  Leben 
nach  dem  Tode,  35  ff .  in  support  of  the  proof  of  an  ancestor  cult. 
For  reasonable  doubts  of  it  of.  Davidson,  art.  *  God/  Hastings's 
Bible  Dictionary,  ii.  200  f. ;  and  for  a  full  argument  against  it, 
Frey,  Tod,  Seelenglaube  und  Seelenknlt  im  Alien  Israel,  1898.  It 
seems  to  me,  in  spite  of  what  Professors  Davidson  and  Frey  ad- 
duce, that  whether  the  teraphim  were  understood  to  be  the  images 
of  ancestors  or  not,  the  practice  of  the  worship  of  ancestors  in 
Israel  is  proved  by  the  laws  in  Deut.  xiv.  i  and  xxvi.  14,  taken 
along  with  the  fact  that  sacrifices  to  the  dead  survived  in  historical 
times  in  other  ancient  religions,  and  also  among  the  Semites  :  cf. 
Robertson  Smith,  Religion  of  the  Semites,  p.  217.  The  shade  of 
Samuel  is  called  a  god  (i  Sam.  xxviii.  13).  The  same  preposition 
is  used  in  Deuteronomy  between  such  sacrifices  and  the  dead, 
as  between  the  legal  sacrifices  and  Jahweh.  Those  are  to  the  dead ; 
these  are  tojahzueh.  When  among  the  Adwan  in  Moab  in  1891, 
I  questioned  them  concerning  their  sacrifices.  It  was  hard  for 
an  ear  unaccustomed  to  the  Bedawee  pronunciation  to  catch 
many  details.  But  this  was  clear.  They  distinguished  certain 
spring  sacrifices,  which  they  make  within  their  camps  as  minshan 
el-mawat  '  for  the  sake  of  the  dead,'  from  those  in  Mecca  at  the 
Great  Bairam,  which  they  described  as  minshan  Allah,  'for  the 
sake  of  God.'  —  The  whole  question  has  been  fully  argued  by 
Charles,  A  Critical  History  of  the  Doctrine  of  the  Future  Life, 
1899,  pp.  20  ff.  While  I  cannot  agree  with  all  his  inferences 
from  the  texts  he  cites  [e.g.  Ex.  xxi.  2-6;  i  Sam.  xxviii.  13,  16) 
his  argument  as  a  whole  appears  to  me  to  be  successful  for  the 
existence  of  ancestor-worship  in  Israel.  —  Other  instances  of 
sacrifices  to  the  dead,  in  Doughty,  Arabia  Deserta,  i.  241,  450. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   185 

called  by  the  later  literature  RephdHm,  probably 
'the  flaccid  ones,'  but  earlier  names  for  them, 
when  they  spoke  through  a  necromancer,  are 
'dbJwth;  1  2,nd  yiddeonim,  perhaps  '  knowing  ones,'  2 
and  are  proofs  of  a  belief  in  their  knowledge  of, 
and  their  influence  upon,  human  Hfe.^  Still  it  is 
to  be  noted  that  they  are  not  represented  in  any 
association  with  the  Deity,  and  that  the  religion 
of  Jahweh  from  a  very  early  time  regarded  traffic 
with  the  dead  as  incompatible  with  loyalty  to 
Jahweh  Himself. 

When  we  pass  to  the  prophets  we  find  no 
relief  from  the  prevailing  silence  as  to  Jahweh's 
relation  to  the  dead.  The  prophets  have  sovereign 
beliefs  in  God's  faithfulness  and  omnipotence,  and 
sovereign  hopes  for  the  future  of  Israel  upon  earth ; 
but  one  and  all  ignore  the  fate  of  the  individual 
man.  Some  of  them  have  left  us  the  stories  of 
their  personal  origms,  they  have  emphasised  their 
individual    relations    to  the  Deity;    but  not  one 

1  According  to  i  Sam.  xxviii.  7,  the  necromancer  was  called 
the  possessor  of  an  'dbh :  according  to  Lev.  xx.  27  the  'obh  was 
in  the  necromancer. 

2  In  Lev.  XX.  27  parallel  to  'obh  and  in  the  man  or  woman  who 
mediated  between  the  spirit  and  the  inquirer.    Cf.  i  Sam.  xxviii. 

3»9- 

3  Dr.  A.  B.  Davidson  thinks  that  the  name  Rephaim  *  and  the 
fact  that  the  'obs  twittered  and  muttered  and  spoke  low  out  of  the 
ground  (Isa.  viii.  19,  xxix.  4)  indicate  that  they  were  regarded 
as  anything  but  powerful  ''gods'"  (Hastings's  Bible  Dictionary, 
ii.  201).  Still  they  had  superhuman  knowledge  ;  and  at  least 
the  whole  prevalence  of  this  necromancy  proves  a  popular  belief 
in  the  real  existence  of  the  dead. 


i86       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

has  betrayed  his  feelings  about  his  death  or 
bequeathed  any  hope  which  strengthened  him  in 
face  of  it  The  great  passages  on  resurrection 
and  the  Divine  conquest  of  death  which  we  read 
in  Hosea  ^  and  in  Ezekiel,^  describe  the  revival  of 
the  nation  from  disaster  and  exile.  In  one  very 
late  prophecy^  there  is  a  cry  that  the  national 
recovery  from  exile  shall  not  be  enough ;  those, 
who  have  died  before  it  comes,  must  rise  from 
their  graves  to  share  it.  But  obviously  this  is 
not  the  hope  of  a  life  with  God  beyond  the  grave. 
Another  cry,^  which  rises  with  this,  is  of  confidence 
that  God  will  abolish  death.  But  that  confidence 
sinks  again,  and  the  brightest  picture  of  the 
subject  which  later  prophets  leave  us  is  of  this 
life:  a  Jerusalem  from  which  premature  and 
violent  death  has  been  banished,  and  the  city  is 
full  of  men  and  women  who  have  reached  a 
quiet  old  age.^ 

Turning  now  to  the  Psalms,  we  must  put  aside, 
as  we  have  done  in  the  case  of  the  Prophets,  all 
expressions  of  immortality  which  are  manifest 
metaphors  of  the  revival  of  the  nation,  and 
merely  affirm  its  reconstruction  and  perpetuity 
upon  earth.  After  these  have  been  disposed  of, 
there  remain  very  few  Psalms  which  illuminate  the 
destiny  of  the  individual  beyond  the  grave ;  nor 
is  any  of  them  a  reasoned  confidence  in  a  future 

1  Hos.  vi.  I  f.,  xiii.  14.  2  Ezek.  xxxvii. 

8  Isaiah  xxvi.  19.  *  xxv.  8.  ^  Zech.  viii.  4. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   187 

for  him  with  God.  At  the  best  they  are  but 
cries  flung  out  in  revolt  from  the  thought  of  a 
future  without  Him,  or  in  passionate  confidence 
that  in  death  He  cannot  desert  the  soul  He  has 
favoured  with  His  grace.  Some  critics  have 
denied  an  individual  reference  to  the  Sixteenth 
Psalm,  and  have  interpreted  its  verses  of  Israel 
as  a  whole ;  and  this  is  not  an  impossible  inter- 
pretation. Yet  it  seems  to  me  that  the  ninth 
and  tenth  verses  are  most  naturally  understood 
of  the  individual,  or  at  least  of  his  generation ; 
it  was  the  living  generation  and  not  the  nation, 
actual  or  ideal,  who  feared  Sheol.^  And  the  indi- 
vidual character  of  the  confidence  of  the  Seventy- 
third  Psalm  is  still  more  clear: 

Nevertheless  I  am  continually  with  Thee  ; 
Thoti  hast  holden  me  with  Thy  right  hand 
Thou  shall  guide  me  with  Thy  cotinseU 
And  afterward  receive  me  to  glory. 
Whom  have  I  in  heaven  but  Thee  ? 
And  there  is  none  upon  earth  I  desire  besides  Thee, 
My  flesh  and  my  heart  fail; 
But  God  is  the  strength  of  my  hearty 
A  nd  my  portion  for  ever? 

Yet  such  faith  did  not  always  succeed  in  break- 
ing  away   from   the   prospect   of    that    fate   for 

1  The  reference  of  the  Psalm  to  individuals  is  further  con- 
firmed if  we  read  thy  pious  ones  (or  leal  or  loving  ones)  as  some 
codd.  do  instead  of  the  singular. 

2  Ps.  Ixxiii.  23-26. 


i88       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND  THE 

individuals  which  we  have  already  seen  accepted 
by  the  earlier  books,  and  which  is  now  described 
with  more  explicitness.  In  Psalms,  if  not  of  the 
individual  yet  of  the  living  generation  of  Jahweh's 
people,  before  whom  death  looms  inevitable,  there 
are  cries  that  the  suppliants  may  be  allowed  to 
continue  the  praise  of  God  in  the  land  of  the 
living : 

For  in  death  tJiere  is  no  remembrance  of  Thee  : 
hi  the  grave  ivho  shall  give  Thee  thanks? 
The  dead  praise  notjahweh, 
Neither  any  that  go  down  into  silence} 
Another  Psalmist  describes  himself,  or  his  own 
generation,  as  the  temporary  guest  of  God,  who 
must  soon  depart  from  His  house  and  go  away ; 

Hear  my  prayer,   O  Jahweh, 
And  give  ear  nnto  my  cry  ; 
Hold  not  Thy  peace  at  my  tears  : 
For  I  am  but  a  gnest  with  Thee, 
And  a  sojoitrner,  as  all  my  fathers  were. 
0  spare  me,  that  I  may  recover  brightness, 
Before  I  go  hence,  and  be  no  more? 
This  is  not  a  prayer  for   immortality,  but  for  a 
little   more    patience    from   God,   a    little   more 
warming   of  the  hands  at    the   fire  of   this  life 
before  the  door  opens  and  the  guest  is  dismissed 
into  the  night.     From  such  depression  caused  by 
the  shortness  of  life  other  Psalms  recover  hope ; 

1  Ps.  vi.  5,  cxv.  17  ;  cf.  xxx.  9,  Ixxxviii.  11. 

2  Ps.  xxxix.  12  f. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   189 

but  they  do  not  recover  by  taking  hold  of  the 
hope  of  eternity.  The  Ninetieth,  for  instance, 
which  of  all  others  most  pathetically  illustrates 
the  transitoriness  of  man's  existence  upon  earth, 
gives  him  no  expectation  of  another,  but  asks  for 
gladness  through  the  days  that  remain,  some  little 
recompense  for  the  evil  of  the  past,  some  re- 
flection of  God's  beauty,  and  the  establishment 
of  the  work  of  His  servants'  hands.  Even  Job, 
when  every  other  door  of  righteousness  is  closed 
to  him,  bursts  for  only  a  few  moments  into  the 
possibility  of  another  life,  of  the  vision  of  God 
and  the  experience  of  His  justice  beyond  the 
grave;  ^  but  then,  as  if  the  thought  were  strange 
and  too  daring,  he  falls  back  from  it  upon  other 
lines  of  search,  and  the  Book  closes  with  the 
manifestation  of  God's  power  on  this  earth,  and 
the  recovery  of  His  servant  to  an  earthly  pro- 
sperity. The  rest  of  the  literature  gives  us  no 
relief.  The  wisdom  of  the  Book  of  Proverbs  is 
for  this  life  alone;  and  Ecclesiastes,  which  ends 
with  a  funeral,  finds  the  only  profit  man  can  have 
in  the  enjoyment,  under  the  fear  of  God,  of  the 
fleeting  opportunities  of  life  while  they  last  ;  for 
they  are  soon  gone,  and  all  things,  youth  and  love, 
knowledge  and  effort,  are  vanity — that  is',  not 
worthless  while  they  last,  but  lasting  so  little  — 
a  breath,  a  pulse  which  soon  expires.  In  the 
very  late  Book  of  Daniel,^  we  find,  however,  one 

1  Job  xix.  25  ff.  2  Circa  165  B.  C. 


190       MODERN   CRITICISM  AND  THE 

explicit  prediction  of  the  resurrection  of  ma^ty 
of  them  who  sleep  in  the  dust  of  the  earthy  some  to 
everlasting  life,  and  some  to  shame  and  everlastifig 
contempt,  and  they  that  be  wise  shall  shine  as  the 
brightness  of  the  firmament ;  and  they  that  turn 
many  to  righteousness  as  the  stars  for  ever  a^id 
ever}  This  prediction  stands  in  very  definite  con- 
trast to  all  that  we  have  elsewhere  found.  We 
may  recognise  in  it  a  more  confident  develop- 
ment of  the  faith,  which  has  already  broken 
forth  in  some  Psalms,  of  the  impossibility  that 
God  should  relinquish  to  the  grave  those  who 
have  trusted  in  Him.  But  we  must  remember 
that  there  had  come  in,  between  them  and  its 
particular  notes  of  resurrection  and  judgement, 
certain  popular  views  and  imaginations  of  the 
future  beyond  the  grave  which  do  not  receive 
any  other  expression  in  the  Old  Testament. 

These,  then,  are  the  essential  lines  in  the  atti- 
tude of  the  Old  Testament  writers  to  the  life 
beyond  the  grave.  They  reveal  the  existence  of 
a  popular  belief  in  a  state  after  death,  which  the 
earlier  religion,  apparently  taking  it  for  granted, 
left  alone  as  outside  its  interests;  but  which  the 
later  faced  and  fought,  and  to  some  extent  rose 
above,  in  the  strength  of  faith  in  the  God  of  Israel. 
Our  next  duty  is  to  inquire  what  were  the  his- 
torical reasons  for  this  popular  belief  in  the  state 
of  the  dead,  as  well  as  for  the  various  phases  of 

1  Dan.  xii.  2,  3. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT     191 

the  attitude  which  the  religion  of  Israel  assumed 
towards  it.  I  believe  that,  instead  of  being  chilled 
by  the  whole  subject  as  so  many  are,  a  preacher 
will  find  it,  when  historically  explained,  one  of 
the  most  fruitful  sources  of  material  and  inspira- 
tion which  the  Old  Testament  has  to  offer  him. 

II.    The  Historical  Explanation. 

We  are  all  probably  acquainted  with  the 
curious  reason  which  used  to  be  offered  for  the 
silence  of  the  earlier  Hebrew  writings  with  regard 
to  another  life.  By  Warburton,  in  his  Divine 
Legation  of  Moses}  it  was  imputed  to  a  design  on 
the  part  of  the  great  lawgiver  to  withdraw  the 
mind  of  his  people  from  the  overpowering  effect 
of  the  elaborate  visions  of  the  other  world  which 
they  had  encountered  on  the  monuments  of  Egypt. 
No  nation  has  developed  '  other-worldliness  '  more 
than  have  the  builders  of  the  Pyramids  and  vast 
mausoleums  of  Memphis,  Abydos  and  Thebes. 
According  to  Warburton,  Moses  intended  to 
purge  the  mind  of  Israel  of  all  the  morbid 
influences  of  this  '  other-worldliness,'  and  so  he 
carefully  excluded  from  his  legislation  every  hint 
of  the  life  to  come.  The  explanation  is  ingeni- 
ous, but  it  is  artificial.  It  is  also  inadequate  in 
light  of  the  critical  reconstruction  of  the  history. 
And  there  is  another  and  more  natural  reason  for 
the  phenomenon  which  it  seeks  to  explain. 
1  1738-1741. 


192       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

We  find  this  in  one  of  the  characteristics  of  the 
race  to  which  Israel  belonged.  The  Semites, 
or,  to  be  accurate,  those  nomadic  Semites  with 
whom  Israel  was  more  closely  connected,  have 
never  been  conspicuous  for  their  interest  in,  or 
their  imagination  of,  a  future  life.  The  Arabs, 
whom  early  Israel  so  largely  resembled,  ^  remem- 
ber their  dead  ;  and  as  they  pass  their  graves  will 
call  upon  them  by  name  and  pour  libations  of 
water  on  the  sandy  mounds  ;2  as  we  have  seen,^ 
they  also  sacrifice  to  them.  Yet  this  is  all.  They 
have  not,  and  never  seem  to  have  had,  either 
dogma  of  another  life,  or  any  vision  of  such,  un- 
less their  beliefs  in  subterranean  jins  or  spirits 
spring  from  their  imagination  of  the  dead  in  the 
grave.  In  Arabic  poetry  before  Mohammed's 
time  the  few  sparks  of  the  hope  of  immortality 
are,  according  to  Wellhausen,  due  to  Jewish  or 
Christian  influence.*  When  Mohammed  himself, 
borrowing  from  the  same  sources,  preached  the 
resurrection,  his  countrymen  mocked  it  as  in- 
credible ;  and  even  now,  after  twelve  centuries 
of  the  prevalence  of  his  religion  in  the  Arabian 
Peninsula,  the  Arabs,  by  the  witness  of  several 

^  See  above,  p.  127. 

2  Wellhausen,  Reste  arab.  Heidentumes,  p.  161 ;  Doughty, 
Arabia  Deserta,  i.  p.  241,  448.  I  have  heard  my  Bedawee  guides 
in  Moab  and  south  of  Engedi  hail  by  name  the  occupants  of  un- 
titled graves  which  we  passed  on  our  way:  *  Ya  Ahmed  ! '  '  Ya 
Dhiab/  Conder  {Heth  and  Moab,  new  ed.  p.  318)  states  that  the 
Adwan  remember  nine  generations  of  ancestors. 

3  P.  184,  note  2.  4  Reste  arab.  Heidentiimes,  p.  164. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   193 

travellers,^  have  not  formed  any  clear  notion  of  a 
future  world. 

The  reasons  for  all  this  are  not  far  to  seek. 
One  of  them  may  be  the  notorious  incapacity  of 
the  Semite,  when  uninfluenced  by  foreign  civilisa- 
tions, for  sustained  speculation.  Others  are  un- 
doubtedly found  in  the  migratory  habits  of  the 
desert  life.  The  shifting  camps,  the  easily  obli- 
terated graves,  the  want  of  written  monuments 
and  records,  impress  the  imagination  rather  with 
the  transiency  than  with  the  permanence  of  man.^ 
It  takes  the  long  occupation  of  one  site,  the 
building  of  cities,  the  raising  of  monuments,  the 
capacity  for  history,  to  sustain  the  memory  of  the 
dead  and  to  hand  on  the  tradition  of  another  life. 
In  the  poetry  of  the  Bible,  the  tent,  easily  folded 
and  carried  away,  is  the  type  of  man's  transient 
life;  but  eternity  is  figured  in  the  city  which 
hath  foundations.  Even  Job's  daring  hope  of  his 
vindication  in  a  life  to  come  is  uttered  along 
with  the  passionate  cry  for  the  inscription  of  his 
cause  on  some  monument  or  book.  O  that  my 
words  were  now  written  I  0  that  they  were  recorded 
in  a  book :  that  they  zvere  graven  with  an  iron  pen 
and  lead  in  the  rock  for  ever  I  ^ 

1  E.g.  Doughty,  Arabia  Deserta,  i.  pp.  240  f.,  445  f. 

2  '  In  the  border  Semitic  countries  is  a  long  superstition  of  the 
grave;  here  {i.e.  at  Hayil  in  Central  Arabia)  is  but  the  simple 
nomad  guise,  without  other  last  loving  care  or  adornment.'  — 
Doughty,  Arabia  Deserta,  i.  p.  618. 

3  xix.  23  f. 

N 


194       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

When  Semites  settled  down  and  built  them- 
selves cities,  and  in  consequence  sepulchres/  they 
either  developed  or,  as  is  probable  in  Babylonia, 
partly  borrowed  from  the  race  which  preceded 
them,  a  certain  imagination  of  life  in  the  grave. 
The  pictures  of  man's  future  home  which  are 
characteristic  of  Babylonian  literature  are  con- 
ceived in  the  likeness  of  one  of  the  caves  or 
underground  structures  in  which  the  dead  were 
laid  for  burial. 

The  house  of  darkness  .  .  . 

The  house  men  enter,  but  cannot  depart  from. 

The  road  men  go  but  cannot  return. 

The  house  from  whose  dwellers  the  light  is  with- 
drawn. 

The  place  where  dust  is  their  food,  their  nourish- 
7nent  clay. 

The  light  they  behold  not;  in  darkness  they 
dwell. 

They  are  clothed  like  birds,  all  fluttering  wings. 

On  the  door  and  the  gateposts  the  dust  lieth  deep? 

This  was  the  universal  resort  of  men  and  their 
everlasting  home.  The  exceptions  to  the  hopeless, 
passionless  fate  which  it  contains  are  few.  So 
far  as  Babylonian  records  have  been  deciphered, 
they  amount  to  one  or  two  —  as  many  as  Enoch 

1  See  p.  193,  note  2. 

2  From  the  Assyrian  Descent  of  Ishtar  to  Hades  (German 
trans,  by  Jeremias,  Die  Bab.  Assyr.  Vorstelhmgen  vom  Leben 
nach  dem  Tode,  p.  11  ;  Eng.  in  Records  of  the  Past,  i.  145. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   195 

and  Elijah  in  the  early  history  of  Israel  —  who 
were  taken  to  the  abode  of  the  gods  and  enjoyed 
immortal  life  in  their  presence.^  For  the  common 
man  the  underworld  is  inevitable,  with  its  dust, 
its  joyless  existence,  its  silence  broken  only  by 
the  peeping  and  chirping  of  ghosts  —  a  concep- 
tion derived,  as  all  who  have  explored  Eastern 
sepulchres  must  admit,  from  the  noises  of  the 
bats  which  throng  the  sepulchres.  The  Babyloni- 
ans called  the  realm  of  the  dead  Aralu;  it  lay 
beneath  a  great  mountain  of  the  same  name. 
Some  scholars  assert  that  it  was  also  known 
to  the  Babylonians  as  Sheol ;  ^  others,  however, 
doubt  this.^  Aralu  had  divine  guardians,  but 
lay  outside  the  jurisdiction  of  the  gods  of  the 
upper  world.*  It  was  entered  only  through  the 
gates  of  the  grave.^ 

Whether  the  Hebrews  borrowed  their  concep- 
tion of  Sheol  from  that  of  the  Babylonians,  or 
whether  both  came  from  a  common  source,  is 
uncertain.  The  latter  is  the  more  probable 
theory.^  It  is,  as  we  have  seen,  in  the  later 
writings  that  the   Hebrew   conception  of  Sheol 

1  Jastrow,  Religion  of  Babylonia,  etc.  576  f. 

2  Jastrow,  op.  cit.  pp.  558  ff. ;  Ainerican  Journal  of  Semitic  Lan- 
guages, xiv. ;  Jeremias,  op.  cit.  p.  109. 

3  Jensen,  Kosmologie  der  Babylonier,  pp.  22  ff.,  and  Zimmem, 
quoted  by  Charles,  op.  cit.  p.  34,  n.  2. 

*  Jastrow,  p.  582. 

6  Ibid.  p.  586. 

^  There  are  slight  differences  in  the  two  conceptions.  The 
confirmation  of  the  evidence  that  the  name  Sheol  occurs  in 
Babylonian  would,  however,  strongly  support  the  first  theory. 


196       MODERN   CRITICISM  AND   THE 

becomes  most  developed ;  and  though  original  to 
early  Israel,  the  conception  may  have  been  elab- 
orated through  Israel's  Babylonian  connections  in 
the  seventh  and  subsequent  centuries.  In  the 
Book  of  Job,  Sheol  is  behind  bars  where  men  rest 
in  the  dust,  and  spread  their  couch  in  the  darhiess} 

There  the  wicked  cease  from  troubling; 
And  there  the  weary  be  at  rest. 
The  prisoners  are  at  ease  together y 
They  hear  not  the  voice  of  the  driver ^ 
The  small  and  the  great  are  there  ; 
And  the  slave  is  free  from  his  master? 

When,  then,  the  nomad  Semite  became  civil- 
ised, this  is  all  that  his  inscribed  sepulchres  and 
monuments,  keeping  the  dead  in  remembrance, 
brought  to  him.  Of  immortality  in  the  true 
sense  of  the  word  —  with  God  and  in  full  enjoy- 
ment of  life  —  the  Hebrew  had  no  inherent  con- 
ception. Even  nature  appears  to  have  made  to 
him  no  such  suggestions  of  resurrection  as  in 
Babylonia  inspired  hope  for  a  heroic  individual 
or  two,^  but  were  not  extended  to  the  common 
man. 

The  want  of  hope  among  the  Semites  must 
not,  however,  be  altogether  charged  upon  their 
physical  environment :  the  main  cause  was  the 
conception  of  the  individual  which  prevailed  in 
Semitic  religion.    To  the  ancient  Semite,  as  we 

1  xvii.  12-16.  2  iii.  17-19. 

2  Epic  of  Ishtar;  see  Jeremias,  op.  cit.  p.  119,  n.  2. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   197 

saw  in  last  Lecture,  God  did  not  deal  with  the 
individual,  but  with  the  tribe  as  a  whole.  It 
was  the  tribal  existence  which  the  divine  honour 
was  obliged  to  maintain:  so  long  as  that  was 
preserved  on  earth,  the  fate  of  the  individual, 
after  he  fulfilled  his  length  of  days,  mattered 
little.  In  Old  Testament  language,  the  leaves  or 
the  branches  might  perish,  if  only  the  stock  and 
stump  remained.  In  another  sense  than  that  in 
which  Christ  used  the  words,  the  gods  of  the 
ancient  Semites  were  not  the  gods  of  the  dead, 
but  of  the  living.  The  necessities  of  a  life  of 
almost  constant  warfare  confirmed  the  tribes- 
men in  these  beliefs,  and  the  dead  were  forgotten 
in  the  stress  of  defending  the  living.  There 
was  no  time  to  brood  on  the  past,  and  even  in 
the  sacred  duty  of  blood-revenge,  which  other- 
wise might  have  been  supposed  to  preserve  the 
memory  of  the  fallen,  the  responsibility  was 
mainly  felt  to  the  tribe  whose  blood  had  been 
spilt,  and  it  crowded  out  the  memory  of  the 
individuals  for  whom  the  vengeance  was  piously 
performed. 

The  same  ideas  prevailed  in  early  Israel.  Up  to 
Jeremiah's  time  the  religious  unit  was  almost  ex- 
clusively the  nation,  and  the  religious  problem  — 
not  as  in  Christianity  the  salvation  of  the  indivi- 
dual—  was  the  perpetuation  upon  earth  of  a  people 
of  Jahweh,  to  serve,  praise  and  bear  witness  for 
Him.    You  remember  how  we  saw  that  the  great 


198       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

ideas  of  Redemption  and  providence  came  into 
the  theology  of  Israel  by  the  redemption  of  the 
nation  from  Egyptian  servitude,  and  by  the  guid- 
ance of  the  nation  through  the  wilderness.  The 
idea  that  God  cared  for  and  dealt  directly  with 
individuals  could  not,  of  course,  be  utterly  absent, 
and  we  see  it  illustrated  in  a  great  many  of  the 
early  narratives  of  Israel.^  But  it  is  significant 
that  some  even  of  those  apparent  individuals 
are,  as  we  learned,  personifications  of  tribes  and 
clans;  and  at  least  even  the  most  personal  of 
them  all  are  represented  as  departing  this  life 
with  hopes,  not  for  themselves,  but  for  the  future 
of  their  families.  It  is  not  otherwise  when  we 
come  to  the  prophets.  In  spite  of  their  own 
individual  experiences  of  religion,  in  spite  of 
Hosea's  sense  of  love  for  the  outcast  wife,  and 
Isaiah's  assurance  of  his  own  cleansing  and  call 
by  God,  the  interest  of  the  prophets  in  the  fate 
of  the  nation  as  a  whole  is  too  overwhelming  to 
allow  them  to  develop  the  elements  of  their  con- 
sciousness of  a  personal  relation  to  the  Deity. 
As  Isaiah  puts  it,  the  great  problem  of  religion, 
the  one  end  upon  which  he  and  his  fellows  see 
concentrated  the  omnipotence  and  righteousness 
of  Jahweh,  is  the  preservation  of  a  Remnant  of 
Israel;  for  if  Israel  utterly  perish,  none  will  be 
left  on  earth  to  represent  Jahweh,  and  the  know- 
ledge of  the  true  God  must  disappear.     To  save 

^  Above,  pp.  106  f. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   199 

and  to  purify  the  Remnant  is  the  whole  interest 
and  warfare  of  religion,  to  which  not  only  must  all 
others  be  postponed,  but  beside  the  crisis  and 
the  glory  of  which  they  lose  their  reality.  The 
future  of  the  nation  on  which  the  early  prophets 
dwell  with  such  power  and  beauty  is  —  till  we 
reach  the  faint  beginnings  of  apocalypse  in 
Zephaniah  —  reached  along  the  lines  of  history 
and  upon  the  surface  of  this  earth.  The  early 
prophets  do  not  think  of  another  world,  but 
of  this  one,  as  the  scene  of  Israel's  ceaseless 
life  with  Jahweh  —  this  world  better  indeed, 
freed  from  war,  famine,  storm,  and  lust,  but 
still  this  world  —  and  they  do  not  always  promise 
that  the  death  of  individuals  shall  be  absent 
from  it.  With  such  national  hopes  drawing 
them  on,  the  prophets  do  not  stop  to  think  — 
at  least,  they  do  not  stop  to  speak  —  of  what 
becomes  of  individual  Israelites.  If  one  genera- 
tion fall,  God  will  raise  another  to  take  its 
place. 

The  indifference  of  the  prophet  to  the  indi- 
vidual is,  however,  not  the  most  interesting 
thing :  from  the  Psalms  we  learn  that  the 
individual  himself  appears  to  have  acquiesced 
in  it.  Between  his  feet  and  the  golden  future 
of  his  people  there  lay  his  own  grave :  the  black, 
inevitable  door  to  Sheol.  Jahweh  would  con- 
tinue to  guide  the  nation,  but  at  that  point 
Jahweh   ceased  to  guide   him.     He   fell   to   the 


200       MODERN   CRITICISM  AND  THE 

dead,  and  Jahweh  and  Israel  left  him  behind. 
Thus,  while  to  us  death  means  to  go  to  God,  to 
the  Israelite  death  was  to  leave  God.  God  was 
with  Israel  and  in  Israel :  but  with  the  dead 
Jahweh  had  as  little  to  do  as  had  the  Babylonian 
gods  of  the  upper  world. 

We  have  already  seen  some  proofs  that  even 
the  pious  adherent  of  Jahweh  accepted  this 
view,^  and  from  the  Psalms  they  might  be  multi- 
plied. Their  date  is  quite  uncertain  ;  if,  as  is 
probable,  they  are  late,  their  testimony  is  all 
the  more  remarkable.  They  prove  that  at  the 
very  heart  of  Israel's  religion  there  were  pious 
men  who  cried  out  against  death  as  the  dissolu- 
tion of  their  communion  with  Jahweh,  but  who 
regarded  that  dissolution  as  the  inevitable  end 
and  prayed  only  for  a  reprieve  till  their  years 
should  be  full  : 

Sheol  camiot  praise  Thee. 

Death  ca7inot  celebrate  Thee. 

They  that  are  gone  down  unto  the  pit  cannot 

hope  for  Thy  truth?" 
I  am  a  guest  with  TheCy 
And  a  sojourner  as  all  my  fathers  were. 
O  spare  me,  that  I  may  recover  brightness, 
Before  I  go  hejice,  and  be  no  more?' 

But  to  these  acceptances  of  the  popular  belief, 
which  are  acceptances  of  despair,  and  which  we 

1  See  above,  p.  88.  ^  Hezekiah's  Psalm;  Isa.  xxxviii.  i8. 

3  Ps.  xxxix.  12,  13. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   201 

can  hardly  read  without  a  shudder,  individuals 
(or  generations)  in  Israel  sometimes  added  others 
that  are  full  of  inspiration  to  ourselves.  The 
Ninetieth  Psalm  is,  even  in  the  Old  Testament, 
the  most  pathetic  description  of  the  drift  of  the 
generations  of  men  into  darkness.  Jahwehy 
Israel's  dwelling-place  hi  all  generations^  alone 
is  eternal. 

Thou  Hemes t  man  into  crumb li7tg, 

And  say  est :  Return  j  ye  children  of  mejt. 

Thou  carriest  them  off  as  with  a  flood. 

They  become  like  a  dream. 

In  the  morning  they  are  like  grass  which 

groweth  up  ; 
In  the  morning  itflourisheth  and  groweth  upy 
In  the  evening  it  is  cut  down  and  wither eth. 
For  we  are  consumed  by  Thi7ie  anger ^ 
And  by  Thy  wrath  are  we  troubled. 
The   reason  for  this  death  is  the   same  as  that 
to   which  the  Jahwist  assigns  it  in  his  story  of 
the  origins  of  man. 

Thou  hast  set  our  iniquities  before  TheCy 
Our  secret  sins  in  the  light  of  Thy  countenance. 
Who  knoweth  the  power  of  Thi^ie  anger. 
Or  Thy  wrath  as  befitteth  the  fear  of  Thee  ? 

Against  the  universal  fate  which  men  expect, 
thus  explained  and  confirmed  as  it  is  by  the 
stern  ethical  principles  of  Jahweh's  religion, 
the  Psalmist  fortifies  himself  and  his  generation, 


202       MODERN   CRITICISM  AND    THE 

not  by  the  hope  of  a  life  to  come,  not  by  a 
gospel  which  explicitly  gets  rid  of  death  as  well 
as  sin ;  but  by  his  faith  that  Jahweh  is  the 
home  of  all  the  living  generations  of  His  people : 
by  beseeching  Him  to  turn  their  hearts  to  the 
value  of  the  days  which  they  are  still  to  have 
with  Him ;  by  a  prayer  that  what  remains  of 
these  days  for  himself  and  his  contemporaries 
may  be  filled  with  gladness,  according  to  the 
days  wherein  they  have  been  afflicted ;  and  that 
whatsoever  their  hands  have  found"  to  do  may 
be  confirmed  by  Him. 

What  a  noble  resolution  to  turn  from  the  con- 
templation of  death  to  work  and  worship !  To 
us  it  is  inexpressibly  precious  as  the  proof  that 
Israel's  faith,  before  any  hope  of  a  future  life 
broke  upon  it,  had  by  its  native  ethical  principles 
and  experience  of  God,  conquered  the  paralysing 
influences  of  that  intellectual  conception  of  death, 
which  it  had  inherited  as  a  part  of  the  Semitic 
race. 

The  time  came,  however,  when,  as  we  have 
seen,  even  so  bright  and  so  ethical  a  faith  as 
that  of  the  Ninetieth  Psalm  was  insufflcient,  and 
the  individual,  who  found  no  victory  and  no  glad- 
ness in  this  life,  dared  to  hope  for  something 
beyond.  When  exactly  such  a  hope  emerged 
we  cannot  determine;  but  our  ignorance  of  the 
date  is  of  little  moment  beside  the  fact  that  we 
know  how  the  change  was  caused.     As  we  saw 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   203 

in  last  Lecture/  there  began  to  brighten,  about 
the  end  of  the  seventh  century,  the  vision  of  the 
religious  worth  of  the  individual.  The  reasons 
for  this  were  many  and  complex.  The  nation 
was  breaking  up,  and  the  individual  was  being 
bidden  to  think  of  himself.  New  ethical  con- 
victions of  personal  responsibility  were  born; 
both  Jeremiah  and  Ezekiel  give  expression  to 
them.  But  more  than  all  there  was  the  spiritual 
originality,  the  independent  experience,  the 
unique  relation  to  God,  of  Jeremiah  himself.  I 
cannot  but  think  that  his  example  did  more 
than  anything  else  to  develop  in  Israel  the 
consciousness  of  the  spiritual  duties  and  rights 
of  the  individual.  At  least  it  must  have  con- 
tributed powerful  aid  to  the  other  tendencies  I 
have  mentioned ;  and  we  find  it  expressed  in 
Jeremiah's  conception  of  the  New  Covenant.  In 
the  time  of  the  Exile,  when  the  political  and 
religious  institutions  of  Israel  disappeared,  the 
greater  stress  was  laid  upon  personal  qualities  as 
the  means  and  highest  possibilities  of  religion  : 
Thus  saith  the  High  and  Lofty  One  who  inhabiteth 
eternity y  whose  name  is  Holy.  I  dwell  in  the  high 
and  holy  place,  with  him  also  that  is  of  a  contrite 
and  a  humble  spirit  to  revive  the  spirit  of  the  humble, 
and  to  revive  the  heart  of  the  contrite  ones?  The 
precious  fruit  of  so  much  sorrow  was  not  lost 
when   the   nation   and   its  ritual  were   restored. 

1  Pp.  165  ff,  2  isa.  Ivii.  15. 


204       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

It  is  the  witness  of  all  historians  of  the  post- 
exilic  period,  that  within  the  strong  nationalism 
and  legalism  of  the  Jews  there  flourished  the 
most  beautiful  personal  piety;  souls  feeling, 
as  Jeremiah  felt  it,  their  individual  relation  to 
God. 

It  would  appear  to  be  from  such  convictions 
of  the  individual's  relation  to  God  that  the  few 
hopes  of  immortality  spring  which  emerge  in 
the  Old  Testament.  They  start  from  a  revolt 
of  the  individual  believer  in  God  either  against 
the  horrible  conditions  of  Sheol,  the  expectation 
of  which  he  had  intellectually  inherited;  or 
against  the  injustice,  which  God's  providence  of 
this  life  does  not  redress,  and  so  forces  the  con- 
science to  appeal  to  His  judgement  hereafter. 
We  have  seen  how,  even  when  he  had  no  hope, 
the  pious  Israelite  shrank  from  the  future  which 
gaped  for  him  in  Sheol.  It  was  the  utter  anti- 
thesis of  his  experience  here:  it  was  silence,  it 
was  powerlessness,  it  was  devoid  of  the  presence 
of  God.  But  God  loved  him,  and  had  made  him 
His  own:  and  God  was  omnipotent  and  eternal. 
God  could  not  have  been  to  the  pious  what  He 
had  been,  and  made  them  what  they  were  only 
to  abandon  them  in  death. 

/  have  setjahweh  always  before  me. 

Because  He  is  at  my  right  hand  I  shall  not  be 
moved, 

Therefore  my  heart  is  glady 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   205 

And  my  .  .  }  rejoiceth. 

Even  my  flesh  dwelleth  in  safety, 

For  Thou  wilt  not  abandon  my  life  to  Sheol^ 

Neither  wilt  thou  suffer  thy  pious  ones  to  see  the 

pit. 
Thou  wilt  make  me  to  know  the  path  of  life  \ 
In  Thy  presence  is  fulness  of  joy  y 
At  Thy  right  hand  are  pleasures  evermore? 
The  other  two  instances  of  hope  for  the  in- 
dividual   after  death   spring  from    more   purely 
ethical  reasons.     The  writer  of  the  Seventy-third 
Psalm   found   his  faith  going  when  he  observed 
the  prosperity  of  the  wicked. 

As  for  me,  my  feet  were  almost  gone. 
My  steps  had  well  nigh  slipped? 
He  heard  how  many  of  God's  people,  led  away 
by  the  security  and  arrogance  of  sinners,  doubted 
if  God  knew,  and  felt  as  if  their  own  righteous- 
ness were  in  vain.*  From  such  a  confession  the 
Psalmist  himself  had  been  saved  by  fears  of 
disloyalty  to   the  generation  of   God's  children. 

1  The  meaning  is  uncertain. 

2  Ps.  xvi.  8-1 1.  As  remarked  above,  this  Psalm  cannot  be 
fairly  interpreted  of  the  revival  of  the  earthly  Israel  from  disaster 
and  exile.  It  is  death,  Sheol,  the  grave,  which  the  writer  fears 
either  for  himself  or  for  the  living  generation  of  Israel.  Of  course, 
it  is  possible  to  read  the  words  of  the  hope  by  which  he  rises 
superior  to  death,  as  if  they  merely  meant  a  deliverance  for  a 
time  from  impending  death.  But  it  is  more  natural  to  take  them 
as  the  assurance  of  immortality  in  spite  of  death.  And  at  least 
they  contain  the  feelings  by  which  such  a  survival  of  actual 
death  became  sure  to  individual  Israelites. 

8  Verse  3.  *  Verses  4-14. 


2o6       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

But  the  pressure  of  his  doubts  was  too  great 
for  him  until  he  entered  into  the  mysteries  of 
God  and  considered  the  latter  end  of  the  wicked} 
Probably  by  the  mysteries^  literally,  the  holy 
things,  of  God?  he  means  the  ultimate  deeds 
of  God  in  the  full  character  of  His  holiness. 
The  certain  end  of  the  wicked  is  destruction, 
and  the  conscience  of  the  Psalmist  tells  him  he 
should  have  known  this,  instead  of  being  un- 
reasonably embittered.^  For  himself,  here  and 
afterwards,  in  life  as  in  death,  the  presence, 
the  counsel,  the  power  of  God  are  sure.  Flesh 
and  heart  may  fail :  God  is  the  strength  of  my 
heart  and  my  portio7i  for  ever.  The  Psalmist 
does  not  tell  us  how  he  shall  rise,  or  that  he 
shall  rise  at  all.  But  the  promises  of  all  future 
doctrines  of  immortality  and  resurrection  are 
here  —  in  the  faithfulness  and  power  of  the  Deity, 
to  whom  His  follower  has  committed  himself. 
That  it  is  the  next  life,  to  which  he  looks  for 
the  action  of  these  divine  attributes,  is  clear 
from  the  despair  of  his  vision  of  this  one,  no 
less  than  from  the  terms  in  which  his  new  hope 
is  expressed. 

1  Verse  17. 

^  ^^""'^'^p.'*^.  ♦  some  take  the  expression  to  imply  esoteric 
doctrines  of  life  and  judgement  after  death  which  were  coming 
into  expression  in  Israel  at  the  time  the  Psalm  was  written. 
But  the  above  seems,  from  the  parallelism  of  the  verse  and  its 
context,  to  be  the  more  natural  rendering. 

8  Verses  18-22. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  207 

In  the  case  of  Job  the  hope  of  a  personal  life 
after  death  ^  is  the  demand  of  the  man's  con- 
science. He  is  dying  unvindicated :  here  God 
will  not  appear  to  him  nor  examine  his  plea. 
Therefore  he  knows  he  shall  see  God  after  death. 
The  individual  consciousness  for  and  in  itself : 
innocence  in  her  own  strength;  the  ethical 
necessities  of  an  unfinished  cause  —  all  demand 
a  life  to  come. 

Our  survey  has  made  it  clear  that  whatever 
hopes  of  immortality  arose  in  Israel,  arose  by 
development  from  the  native  principles  of  Israel's 
religion.  The  development  may  have  been  as- 
sisted by  the  influence  of  foreign  faiths  with 
which  the  nation  came  into  contact,  but  of  such 
we  know  little  or  nothing.  Whatever  were  the 
climates  which  helped  to  ripen  the  germs,  the 
germs  were  Israel's  own.  Stage  by  stage  we 
discern  a  change  of  attitude  on  the  part  of 
Israel's  faith  to  that  view  of  the  state  of  the 
dead  which  the  nation  received  from  their  an- 
cestors and  their  kinsfolk.  The  change  appears 
to  be  coincident  with  the  general  ethical  progress 
of  the  religion.  So  long  as  the  interest  of  the 
Deity  was  supposed  to  be  confined  to  the  national 
interests,  the  future  state  was  ignored  as  outside 
Jahweh's  providence.  But  when  the  religion  of 
Israel  burst  its  merely  national  embodiment,  and 
just  in  proportion  as  the  individual  realised  his 

}  Job  xix.  25-27. 


2o8       MODERN   CRITICISM  AND   THE 

own  spiritual  life  and  direct  relation  to  God, 
Sheol  had  to  be  faced,  and  was  faced.  So  fixed 
on  the  mental  horizon  of  Israel  had  this  gloomy 
prospect  become,  that  many  pious  Israelites  knew 
to  pray  for  no  more  than  a  respite  from  it.  These 
may  be  the  earlier  revolts  against  Sheol,  and 
those  others  may  be  later  which,  as  we  have 
seen,  expressed  convictions  of  the  impossibility 
of  so  dark  a  fate  for  the  believer  in  Jahweh,  and 
uttered  hopes  of  his  redemption  from  it.  But 
the  question  of  date  is  extremely  difficult;  and 
we  must  be  content  to  note  that  the  few  late 
hopes  of  immortality  in  the  Old  Testament  broke 
away,  when  they  did,  on  the  strength  of  a  de- 
veloped consciousness  of  the  individual's  union 
with  Jahweh,  and  on  those  ethical  principles 
of  Jahweh's  religion,  which  as  the  wrongs  and 
tyrannies  of  this  life  accumulated,  had  no  appeal 
except  to  a  future  judgement. 

To  follow  these  hopes  further,  to  trace  their 
essential  identity  through  that  new  scenery  of  the 
next  life  which  was  developed  in  the  apocryphal 
literature,  and  to  find  that  what  gives  them  their 
strength  in  the  Old  Testament  —  the  permanence 
of  individual  character,  the  need  of  a  future 
judgement,  the  faithfulhess  and  omnipotence  of 
God  —  is  what  also  inspires  the  New  Testament 
gospel  of  immortality  :  all  this  would  be  instruc- 
tive, but  it  would  carry  us  beyond  our  proper 
limits. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  209 

III.     The  Use  to  Our  Own  Day. 

But  you  may  say  that  all  this  is  a  matter  of 
ancient  history  and  its  interest  only  scientific: 
*  What  use  is  it  to  us  preachers  dealing  with  the 
religion  of  to-day  ? ' 

I  do  not  forget  that  these  lectures  are  primarily 
intended  for  preachers.  It  is  because  I  believe 
in  the  practical  value  to  such  of  the  history  of 
the  Old  Testament  hope  of  immortality  that  I 
have  traced  this  history  through  so  much  detail. 
Nay  more :  I  believe  that  the  practical  value 
does  not  begin  where  at  last  the  individual's 
assurance  in  his  future  with  God  breaks  away 
from  the  visions  of  Sheol;  but  that  as  pastors 
and  teachers  you  will  find  in  every  previous 
and  inferior  stage  of  the  development  something 
parallel  to,  something  illustrative  of,  something 
charged  with  consolation  for,  the  experience  of 
the  men  and  women  of  your  own  generation. 

In  the  first  place,  we  shall  scarcely  find  to-day 
any  parish  or  congregation  of  educated  people,  in 
which  are  not  some  almost  as  devoid  of  hope  for 
the  future  as  the  most  despairing  Psalmist  in  the 
Psalter.  In  the  thinking  of  civilised  men  there 
has  been  for  years  a  steady  ebb  from  the  shores 
of  another  life.  The  causes  of  this  are  very  dis- 
cernible. There  was  bound  to  be  a  reaction  from 
the  excessive  '  other-worldliness '  of  the  first  half 
of  the  century  :  men  had  grown  sick  of  its  glare, 
o 


210       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

Their  hearts  easily  yielded  to  new  tendencies, 
drawing  with  irresistible  force  the  conscience  and 
the  reverence  of  men  upon  the  present  and  visible 
environment  of  their  lives.  Science  claimed 
our  wonder  and  expectation  for  the  opening 
secrets  of  the  material  universe  ;  and  not  only 
the  individual's  future,  but  his  present,  which 
is  the  one  measure  and  warrant  of  his  future, 
shrank  to  nothing  before  the  vastness  of  forces 
which  rolled  on  their  way  indifferent  to  him  and 
his  fate.  For  a  time  the  great  social  movements 
of  the  age  seemed  to  come  to  the  rescue  of  the 
individual,  with  a  gospel  of  duties  and  hopes 
above  the  material  course  of  nature.  Yet  the 
duties  were  in  a  present,  among  whose  crowds 
he  felt  his  littleness  still;  and  the  hopes,  like 
those  of  early  Israel,  were  for  a  future  which 
his  race,  but  not  he,  would  share.  With  such 
tendencies  religion  herself  largely  conspired, 
emphasising  with  the  absorption  of  a  novice  the 
wonder  and  sacredness  of  this  life,  and  turn- 
ing with  the  zeal  of  a  penitent  to  those  duties 
of  to-day  which  she  had  too  long  neglected. 
Such  influences  were  felt,  and  expressed  in 
literature,  long  ago;  now  they  have  penetrated 
humanity.  Common  men  and  women  encounter 
them,  not  upon  the  heights,  where  even  the 
darkest  mists  sometimes  break  and  roll  past,  but 
amid  the  never-settling  dust  of  life,  and  with 
hearts  which  petty  trouble  has  worn  bare  of  all 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   211 

capacity   for    hope   and   vision.     Such    are    the 
drifted  souls  to  whom  we  have  to  preach.    They 
are  largely  unconscious  of  their  exile,  but  some 
have  God,  all  have  love.     When  their  experience 
of  Him  falls  beneath  the  imminence  of  their  own 
death,  or  when  their  love  proves  her  weakness 
in  the  death  of  others,  then  they  are  stung  by 
the  sense  of  their  hopelessness :   far  out  to  sea, 
not  by  their  own  wilfulness  but  on  the  intellectual 
tides  of  the  age,  whose  progress  they  had  either 
never  observed,  or  had  only  rejoiced  in  the  stir 
and  the  motion  of  it.     When  you  find  such  men 
and  women,  you  will  understand  that  the  Psalms 
of   Israel  are  not,  like   the  fossils  of  our  great 
museums,   proofs   of  the   stages  which   our   life 
has  passed  through  and  left  behind,  but  are  the 
eternal  cries  of  the  human  heart.     And  you  will 
tell  your  people  that  such  Psalms  have  been  left 
in  God's  Word,  for  proof  of  how  His  Spirit  — 
which  is  elsewhere  described  as  making  interces- 
sion for  us  with  groanings  that  cannot  be  uttered 
—  sympathises  with  those  frequent,  perhaps  in- 
evitable, experiences  of  humanity,  and  presents 
them    to    God    Himself ;    that    they    are    here 
preserved    in    order   that   all    such    forwandered 
souls  may  see  that  they  have  not  lost  the  road, 
but   that    others    of    God's   own    people    passed 
through    these   very   shades ;    and  lo !    the   end 
was    not    only   a   far-off    sight   of    the    Father, 
but  the   end  of   the  agony  and  strife,  to  which 


212       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND  THE 

they    contributed     their    portion,     was     Christ 
Himself. 

But  again,  the  Old  Testament  hope  of  a 
national  immortality,  of  a  widening  and  ever 
more  glorious  future  for  the  race,  which  absorbed 
the  individual  and  gave  him  power  to  forget 
his  own  fate,  has  its  counterpart  in  our  day  in 
the  strong  enthusiasm  and  unselfish  service 
which  the  idea  of  '  a  corporate  immortality ' 
has  roused  in  numbers  of  the  best  men  and 
women,  irrespective  of  their  own  salvation.  Such 
a  belief  is  not  incompatible  —  as  we  see  both 
from  the  Old  Testament  forms  of  it  and  in 
many  of  its  modern  representatives  —  with  a 
strong  and  even  a  personal  faith  in  God.  But 
to-day  it  probably  attracts  most  of  its  votaries, 
not  because  it  is  His  promise,  but  by  the  grand, 
confident  notes  of  progress  on  the  visible  world, 
which,  by  the  help  of  science,  it  reiterates,  as 
well  as  by  the  unselfish  and  heroic  tones  in 
which  the  devotion  of  individuals  to  it  is  capable 
of  being  pitched.  Not  only  have  some  of  the 
finest  poems  of  the  century  been  inspired  by 
faith  in  the  glorious  future  of  the  race  and  the 
subordination  to  it  of  the  individual,  but  many 
men  and  women  of  high  character  and  full  sur- 
render to  the  service  of  their  kind  have  been 
content  to  find  in  such  a  future  all  their  aims 
and  reward,  without  any  expectation  of  a  per- 
sonal   immortality.     Life    and    labour    in    such 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   213 

a  faith  have  not  unplausibly  been  celebrated  as 
more  heroic  than  that  of  the  Christian,  who  has 
worn  out  his  strength  for  others,  or  has  suffered 
martyrdom,  in  the  hope  of  everlasting  life  for 
himself  with  God. 

Nevertheless  we  cannot  allow,  what  many 
assert,  that  the  belief  in  a  *  corporate  immor- 
tality' is  an  advance  upon  that  which  it  has 
recently  seemed  to  displace.  On  the  contrary 
the  belief  is  one  which  has  been  already  tried 
and  found  wanting.  As  our  survey  of  the  Old 
Testament  has  shown  us,  it  is  not  a  hope  with 
which  human  hearts  remained  satisfied,  even 
when  it  was  presented  to  them  with  all  the 
sanctions  of  an  ethical  religion,  and  was  loyally 
accepted  by  pious  men.  We  cannot  wonder,  if 
the  moral  worth  and  charm  of  ^  corporate  immor- 
tality '  should  from  time  to  time  revive  their  sway 
over  the  best  and  even  the  most  religious  of 
human  minds.  Yet  wherever  religion  assumes 
its  highest  form  in  the  relation  of  the  individual 
man  to  God,  his  Father  and  Lord,  there,  as  the 
experience  of  Israel  proves  to  us,  the  assurance 
of  personal  immortality  must  sooner  or  later 
emerge.  And  there  will  conspire  with  it  the 
strongest  instincts  of  the  love  of  the  individual 
for  those  who  are  dearest  to  him. 

Yet  while  this  is  true,  it  is  well  for  us  all 
sometimes  to  pitch  our  religious  life  in  terms 
which    do    not  include    the   hope  of   a   future. 


214       MODERN   CRITICISM  AND    THE 

Most  of  the  crises  of  religious  experience  may 
be  achieved,  as  some  of  the  grandest  Psalms 
fulfil  their  music,  without  the  echo  of  one  of 
the  far-off  bells  of  heaven.  A  man  may  pass 
through  the  evangelical  experiences  of  con- 
version, regeneration  and  redemption,  without 
thinking  any  more  of  the  future  than  the  little 
child  thinks,  but  only  sure  and  glad  that  his 
Father  is  with  him.  The  Old  Testament  is 
of  use  in  reminding  us  that  the  hope  of  im- 
mortality is  one  of  the  secondary  and  inferential 
elements  of  religious  experience.  Has  not  Christ 
Himself  summed  up  the  teaching  of  the  Ninetieth 
Psalm  ?  Work  while  it  is  called  to-day,  for  the 
night  cometh  ifi  which  no  man  can  work. 

The  great  thing  is  to  be  sure  of  our  individual 
relation  to  God.  In  teaching  man  that  life  is 
in  Him  and  in  nothing  else,  and  that  the  term 
of  our  days  here  has  been  given  us  to  find  Him, 
the  Old  Testament  has  done  more  for  the  assur- 
ance of  immortality  than  if  it  had  explored  the 
life  awaiting  us,  or  had  endowed  us  with  strong 
intellectual  conceptions  of  its  reality. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   215 


LECTURE  VII 

THE  PROPHETS  AS    PREACHERS    TO   THEIR    OWN 

TIMES:    WITH   THEIR   INFLUENCE   ON  THE 

SOCIAL  ETHICS   OF   CHRISTENDOM 

In  the  previous  Lectures  of  this  course  we  have 
had  occasion  to  consider  several  elements  in  the 
teaching  of  the  Prophets  ;  but  there  are  others,  as 
relevant  to  our  present  task,  which  we  have  hardly 
touched.  Of  these  the  principal  are  the  qualities 
of  patriotism  which  the  Prophets  illustrate,  their 
travail  for  their  own  people  and  their  judge- 
ments upon  them,  their  conception  of  national 
religion,  with  the  place  which  they  find  in  that 
for  the  individual,  and  their  doctrine  of  social 
and  civic  duties  —  in  a  word,  the  ministry  of  the 
Prophets  to  their  own  times.  But  this  cannot  be 
adequately  treated  without  an  account  of  the 
growth  in  the  Christian  Church  of  the  historical 
interpretation  of  the  Prophets  (as  distinguished 
from  the  dogmatic  and  allegorical),  and  of  what 
has  always  been  the  immediate  consequence  of 
that  interpretation,  the  influence  of  the  Prophets 
upon  the  social  ethics  of  Christendom.     In  other 


2i6       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND  THE 

words,  it  is  impossible  to  do  justice  to  the  preach- 
ing of  the  Prophets  to  their  own  time  without 
some  appreciation  of  their  message  to  all  times 
and  of  its  results  in  Christian  civilisation.  I 
hope  to  attempt  this  in  a  manner  which  shall  be 
no  digression  from,  but  a  real  contribution  to, 
our  practical  aim  in  these  studies  as  preachers 
to  our  own  generation.  But  besides  the  civic 
elements  in  prophecy  there  are  others,  which  we 
have  not  yet  examined.  We  ought  to  realise  the 
conception  by  the  Prophets  of  what  we  call  Law 
both  in  nature  and  in  history;  and  their  attitude 
to  miracle.  Nor  would  a  course  of  lectures  upon 
the  preacher's  use  of  the  Old  Testament  be  com- 
plete without  some  impressions  of  the  general 
style  and  genius  of  those  great  exemplars  of 
his  art. 

All  these  things  I  propose  to  take  in  this 
Lecture;  the  influence  of  the  Prophets  on  the 
Christian  Church  in  the  first  part;  the  qualities  of 
their  patriotic  ministry  in  the  second  part;  and 
in  the  third  the  other  features  of  their  preaching. 

I.    The  Influence  of  the  Prophets  on  the  Christian 
Church  and  Civilisation. 

It  is  pertinent  to  our  purpose  to  remind  our- 
selves once  more  that  there  is  no  part  of  the 
Old  Testament  upon  which  Modern  Criticism  has 
been  so  constructive  as  within  the  prophetical 
writings.     I    do    not    forget   that   Criticism    has 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   217 

already  removed  from  many  of  the  Prophets 
large  portions  of  the  Books  which  bear  their 
names;  nor  that  we  have  entered  upon  a  more 
thorough  analysis  of  these  Books,^  which  may 
issue  in  further  subtractions  of  the  same  kind.^ 
But  whether  a  Book  be  authentic,  in  the  technical 
meaning  of  the  word,  is  of  small  interest  com- 
pared with  its  authenticity  as  vision,  as  truth 
and  as  the  revelation  of  God.  To  vindicate  the 
authorship  of  this  or  that  chapter  by  the  man 
whose  name  it  bears  is  but  a  poor  service  com- 
pared with  the  proof  that  it  rises  from  real  life, 
that  it  is  the  message  of  a  true  prophet  to  living 
men,  and  that  it  deals  with  the  essential  problems 
of  human  society.^  In  all  these  high  respects 
the  constructive  character  of  Modern  Criticism 
may  be  fearlessly  asserted.  The  great  principle,  7^ 
that  a  prophet,  however  far  his  visions  may  roam, 
always  starts  from  the  facts  of  his  own  day  and 
speaks  first  to  his  contemporaries,  was  revived  * 
by  Criticism  in  time  for  the  results  of  Archae- 

1  See  above,  pp.  44  f. 

2  No  doubt  critical  ambition  has  in  certain  directions  of  this 
analysis  gone  too  far  for  certainty ;  and  we  must  not  anticipate 
the  final  consensus  of  criticism  by  the  acceptance  of  the  ingenious 
but  often  arbitrary  adventures  of  individual  critics. 

3  Even  so  uncompromising  an  opponent  of  Criticism  as  the 
late  Mr.  D.  L.  Moody  came  to  see  this.  He  said  to  me,  and  I 
believe  wrote  also  to  a  friend,  that  '  it  is  not  the  authorship  of  the 
Books  of  the  Bible  that  matters,  but  the  contents.' 

4  The  first  exegete  who  had  any  real  instinct  of  this  principle 
was  Theodore  of  Mopsuestia.  For  his  teaching  and  other  in- 
stances of  the  revival  of  this  principle  see  below,  pp.  227  ff. 


2i8       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

ology  to  be  used  in  its  illustration ;  and  nowhere 
has  Archaeology  done  more  for  the  history  of 
Israel,  or  Criticism  more  fully  employed  archaeo- 
logical evidence  than  throughout  the  prophetic 
period.  The  Hebrew  Prophets  were  contempo- 
raneous with  the  Empires  of  Assyria,  Babylonia 
and  Persia;  and  the  monuments  of  these  Empires 
confirm  and  illustrate  the  history  which  the 
Prophets  reflect.  The  whole  world  of  thought 
and  action  from  which  the  prophetical  literature 
springs,  and  upon  which  it  reacts,  is  almost  as 
clear  and  vivid  to  our  eyes  as  the  world  of 
Shakespeare  and  his  dramas. 

The  consequence  of  this  exegetical  principle 
and  of  its  illustration  by  Archaeology  has  been 
a  decided  revival  of  the  use  of  the  Prophets  by 
the  Christian  pulpit.  Thirty  years  ago  in  Great 
Britain  some  observers  of  our  literature  and 
politics  alleged  a  considerable  decrease  in  the 
influence  of  the  Old  Testament.^  Quotations 
from  it,  and  allusions  to  its  characters  and  events 
were  said  to  be  growing  less  frequent  in  the 
speeches  and  writings  of  public  men.  In  the 
pulpit  of  the  same  period  the  uses  of  the  Old 
Testament  were  confined  to  the  dogmatic,  the 
apologetic,  and  the  individually  ethical.    Prophecy 


1  I  suppose  that  John  Bright  was  at  that  time  the  one  states- 
man of  the  highest  rank  whose  style  of  speaking  showed  any 
influence  of  the  Old  Testament ;  and  Mr.  Gladstone  and  Lord 
Shaftesbury  the  only  two  others  who  seriously  studied  it. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   219 

was  employed  for  the  illustration  of  dogma,  the 
proof  of  the  Divinity  of  Christ,  and  the  example 
of  personal  religion ;  but  except  for  the  enforce- 
ment of  Sabbath  observance  — which,  besides,  was 
based  on  the  Law  and  not  on  the  Prophets  — 
the  use  made  of  the  social  and  civic  teaching  of 
the  Old  Testament  was  very  infrequent.  The 
noble  examples  of  the  preaching  of  social  duties 
which  were  afforded  by  Kingsley  and  Maurice  ^ 
bore  little  fruit,  largely  I  believe  because  they 
were  not  sustained  upon  a  thorough  historical 
criticism  of  the  Prophets.^  The  real  recovery  of 
the  historical  preaching  of  the  Old  Testament 
may  be  said  to  have  started  from  the  publication 
of  Dean  Stanley's  Lectures  on  the  Jewish  Church, 
and  Stanley,  while  he  owed  much  to  his  own 
vision  of  the  Holy  Land  and  to  his  superb  gift  of 
historical  painting,  was  in  his  views  of  the  re- 
ligious development  of  Israel  a  pupil  of  Ewald. 
I  need  hardly  remind  you  of  how  the  combination 
of  a  historical  and  a  practical  treatment  of  the 

1  See  below,  at  the  close  of  this  section. 

2  Now  that  we  have  this  we  can  admire  still  more  than  their 
contemporaries  did,  the  moral  sympathy  and  intuition  which 
enable  both  these  preachers,  and  especially  Maurice  {Prophets and 
Kings  of  the  Old  Testament),  to  grasp  so  firmly  the  essence  of  the 
Prophets'  messages  to  their  own  day,  and  to  apply  it  so  powerfully 
to  the  nineteenth  century.  Nor  need  we  hesitate  to  give  some 
of  the  same  praise  to  Pusey,  who,  although  his  interest  as  a  com- 
mentator is  mainly  in  the  dogmatic  and  predictive  value  of  the 
Prophets  [Minor  Prophets),  knew,  as  his  University  Sermons 
prove,  how  to  enforce  from  the  pulpit,  with  great  power,  their 
ethical  teaching. 


220       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

Old  Testament  has  progressed  in  England,  upon 
that  reconstruction  of  Israel's  history  which  suc- 
ceeded Ewald's/  under  the  powerful  leadership 
of  the  Old  Testament  scholars  of  Oxford  and 
Cambridge;  or  how  it  has  spread  through  the 
Nonconformist  ministry  upon  the  impulse  of 
teachers  who  are  equally  loyal  to  the  principles 
of  historical  criticism.  Let  me  give  but  one 
instance  of  the  combination  of  the  methods  of 
modern  criticism  with  fervid  and  practical  preach- 
ing from  the  Prophets  —  one  proof  of  how  false  it 
is  to  suppose  that  the  adoption  of  critical  results 
impairs  a  preacher's  power  in  applying  the  Old 
Testament  to  his  own  generation.  Dr.  Farrar 
accepts  the  legitimacy  of  the  critical  methods, 
he  accepts  not  a  few  of  their  results  ;  ^  yet  his 
preaching  has  always  been  warmly  ethical  and 
directly  applied  to  the  social  problems  and  vices 
of  our  day. 

In  my  own  country  and  Church  the  similar 
revival  of  ethical  preaching  from  the  Old  Testa- 
ment was  due  in  the  first  place  to  the  teaching 
of  Professor  A.  B.  Davidson,  in  its  powerful 
union  of  spiritual  insight  with  fidelity  to  the 
historical  situations  of  Israel,  and  sympathy  with 
them  ;  and  in  the  second  place  to  the  long  trial 
of  his  pupil,  Professor  William  Robertson  Smith, 

1  See  above,  Lecture  ii.,  Section  I. 

2  Lives  and  Times  of  the  Minor  Prophets,  pp.  19,  20  ;  The 
Second  Book  0/ Kings  2Xi^  Daniel  (Expositor's  Bible ),/«w/w. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  221 

for  the   critical  opinions  which  he  pubUshed  in 
the  EncyclopcEdia  Brifannica} 

The  official  result  was  Professor  Smith's  re- 
moval from  his  chair,  by  what  many  of  us  still 
think  to  have  been  an  arbitrary  use  of  eccle- 
siastical power  on  the  part  of  a  majority  of  the 
Free  Church  General  Assembly  of  1881.  But 
the  critical  principles  for  which  he  fought  were 
never  condemned,  and  his  trial  —  carried  from  one 
Church  Court  to  another  and  debated  in  almost 
every  Free  Church  Presbytery  in  the  country  — 
turned  out  to  have  been  the  education  of  large 
numbers  of  men  in  the  meaning  of  criticism  and 
its  effects  upon  Scripture.  Professor  Smith  ap- 
pealed from  the  Church  Courts  to  the  people  in 
two  series  of  lectures  :  one  of  which,  upon  The 
Prophets  of  Israel,  was  published  at  a  time 
auspicious  to  its  subject  for  another  reason.  In 
Scottish  preaching  the  broad  influence  of  Thomas 
Chalmers  had  almost  disappeared ;  ^  social  sub- 
jects were  infrequently  treated  by  the  pulpit, 
and   the   Gospel   was   preached    with   but   little 

1  Ninth  ed.,  articles '  Angels,'  *  Bible/  '  Chronicles,' '  Deutero- 
nomy/ etc. 

2  There  were  of  course  several  notable  services  to  social  ethics 
rendered  by  Scottish  ministers :  Dr.  Begg's,  on  behalf  of  farm- 
servants;  Dr.  Guthrie's,  for  city  children;  and  Dr.  Blaikie's 
work,  Better  Days  for  Working  People.  But  these  and  other 
social  efforts  were  for  the  most  part  pursued  outside  the  pulpit. 
One  still  useful  series  of  sermons  on  the  Old  Testament  are  those 
of  William  Arnot  on  the  Book  of  Proverbs,  Laws  from  Heaven 
for  Life  on  Earth. 


222       MODERN   CRITICISM  AND  THE 

reference  to  the  social  and  economic  duties  of 
Christians.  Then  came  Socialism  upon  us,  with 
all  its  trumpets  sounding;  and  although  this 
movement  has  converted  but  few  to  its  dogmas, 
it  has  assisted  to  rouse  the  civic  conscience  in 
the  Church,  and  to  awaken  everywhere  a  new 
interest  in  social  questions.  Coincident  with  the 
beginnings  of  this  interest  was  the  publication 
of  The  Prophets  of  Israel ;  and  from  the  co- 
incidence we  may  venture  to  date  a  revival  of 
the  Prophets  in  the  Scottish  pulpit.  Every 
department  of  religious  activity  felt  its  effects. 
Sermons  became  more  ethical;  the  studies  of 
Bible-classes  in  the  Old  Testament,  instead  of 
being  confined  to  the  historical  Books,  were 
extended  to  the  prophetical ;  and  a  considerable 
body  of  popular  literature  has  appeared,  which 
expounds  the  teaching  of  the  Prophets  and  in 
many  cases  applies  it  to  modern  life.^  The 
effect,  then,  in  Britain  of  the  modern  criticism  of 
the  Prophets  may  be  reckoned  as  constructive 
and  practical  in  the  highest  degree. 

1  I  am  unaware  how  far  this  latter  phenomenon  has  appeared 
in  other  lands.  But  in  Holland  there  was  the  work  of  J.  J.  P. 
Valeton,  jun.,  Amos  en  Hosea,  1894,  which  contains  this  passage  : 
'These  prophecies  have  a  word  of  God,  as  for  all  times,  so 
especially  for  our  own.  Before  all  it  is  relevant  to  "  the  social 
question  "  of  our  day,  to  the  relation  of  religion  and  morality.  .  .  . 
Often  it  has  been  hard  for  me  to  refrain  from  expressly  pointing 
out  the  agreement  between  Then  and  To-day.'  And  in  Germany 
there  was  Cornill's  Frankfort  lectures  to  educated  laymen,  Der 
Israelitische  Prophetismus  (1894).  Both  of  these  are  by  advanced 
critics  of  the  first  rank. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   223 

I  have  thus  begun  with  our  own  times,  because 
they  are  naturally  of  most  religious  interest  to 
us.  But  I  now  ask  you  to  go  back  with  me 
upon  that  survey  which  I  promised  of  the  influ- 
ence of  the  Old  Testament,  and  in  particular 
of  the  Prophets,  upon  the  social  ethics  of  Chris- 
tendom from  the  earliest  times  to  the  age  before 
our  own.  We  shall  see  how  strangely  diverse  the 
character  of  that  influence  has  been.  The  candid 
student,  who  carefully  traces  its  effects  upon 
European  civilisation,  is  still  left  to  question 
whether  the  cruelties  and  superstitions  which 
were  sanctioned  by  an  appeal  to  Hebrew  example, 
or  the  legislation  and  struggles  for  reform  which 
were  inspired  by  the  Law  and  the  Prophets,  have 
been  the  more  conspicuous  and  influential.  Yet 
of  this  there  can  be  no  doubt,  that  where  a  his- 
torical criticism  of  the  Old  Testament,  however 
imperfect,  was  cultivated,  there  the  immediate 
effect  upon  Christian  preaching  from  the  Old 
Testament  was  sound  and  practical  to  a  very 
high  degree. 

Even  before  the  establishment  of  Christianity 
as  the  religion  of  the  Roman  Empire  the  political 
influence  of  the  Old  Testament  began  to  be 
pervasive  and  conspicuous.  No  one  can  examine 
early  Christian  inscriptions  without  being  struck 
by  the  fact  that  the  quotations  from  Scripture 
which  they  contain  are  almost  all  drawn  from  the 
Books  of  the  Old  Testament,  but  are  often  modi- 


224       MODERN   CRITICISM  AND   THE 

fied  so  as  to  give  them  a  Christian  significance.^ 
The  application  of  the  Old  Testament  to  domestic 
life  must  have  been  nearly  universal  in  early 
Christianity.  The  sense  of  the  Divine  protec- 
tion of  the  home,  and  the  influence  of  those 
examples  of  family  virtue  which  the  Hebrew 
Scriptures  record,  are  frequently  expressed ;  nor 
can  such  teaching  as  that  of  Deuteronomy  and 
the  Proverbs  have  failed  to  permeate  the  private 
life  of  the  Church.  Besides  these  there  were  the 
more  formal  and  public  results.  Excluded  from 
the  society  of  the  world  in  which  she  existed, 
the  primitive  Church  had  to  legislate  not  only 
for  the  worship,  but  for  the  social  life  and  dis- 
cipline of  her  members.  In  her  circumstances, 
she  could  organise  only  upon  a  theocratic  basis, 
and  such  was  found  already  developed  and  de- 
tailed within  her  Old  Testament  Canon.  It  is 
easy  to  perceive  how,  in  the  government  of  the 
Church  —  especially  in  her  hierarchy  and  in  her 
judgement  of  heretics  —  there  came  to  be  sanc- 
tioned, by  appeal  to  the  letter  of  the  Hebrew 
Scriptures,^  principles  and   tempers  which  were 

1  I  was  very  much  impressed  by  this  when  reading  the  early 
Christian  inscriptions  still  extant  on  the  hard  basalt  of  Hauran 
and  other  regions  east  of  the  Jordan  ;  and  the  impression  was 
confirmed  by  a  study  of  Le  Bas  and  Waddington's  collection  of 
Greek  inscriptions.  On  lintels  of  houses  and  tombstones  the  Lxx. 
version  is  frequently  quoted,  with  the  substitution  of  XpiarSs  for 
Kvpios  or  QeSs  (cf.  Historical  Geography  of  the  Holy  Land,  p.  634). 

2  Especially  in  the  Apostolic  Constitutions,  and  by  Cyprian. 
Cf.   Diestel,    Gesch.  des  Alien    Testaments  in  der   Christlichen 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   225 

hostile  to  Christ's  teaching,  and  which  in  their 
subsequent  development  have  engendered  the 
rankest  tyranny  and  superstition.  On  this  I 
dwelt  sufficiently  in  the  first  Lecture. 

While  these  evils  were  aggravated  through  the 
adoption  of  Christianity  by  the  Imperial  power, 
we  perceive  from  this  event  onwards  another 
effect  of  the  Old  Testament  of  a  more  wholesome 
quahty.  The  influence  of  the  Jewish  codes  upon 
the  legislation  and  public  morals  of  the  Empire 
from  Constantine  to  Justinian  has  never  been 
critically  treated;  but  this  is  certain,  that  'the 
laws  of  Moses  were  received  as  the  divine  original 
of  justice ' ;  ^  and  that  it  was  their  example  which 
braced  Roman  legislators  to  put  down  the  bestial 
sins,  and  to  treat  all  sexual  vice  with  more 
severity  than  the  Imperial  authorities  had  pre- 
viously attempted.^ 

Following  the  example  of  the  Apostles,  the 
preachers  of  the  early  Church,  whether  in  argu- 
ment or  homily,  made  continual  use  of  the  Old 
Testament.      The  prevailing    method    of    inter- 

Kirche,  pp.  141  ff. ;  Gibbon,  Decline  and  Fall,  ch.  xxviii.,  end  of 
first  paragraph. 

1  Gibbon,  ch.  xliv. :  vol.  v.  p.  322  in  Smith's  edition. 

2  Ibid.  322  ff.  Diestel  {Gesch.  des  A.  T.,  151  £.)  mentions  the 
Lex  Dei:  sive  Mosaicartim  et  Romanartim  legtim  collatio,  by 
Licinius  Rufinus,  towards  the  end  of  the  fifth  century.  It  is  a 
list  of  parallels  between  the  Mosaic  and  Roman  Laws  :  it  is  im- 
portant in  so  far  as  it  proves  the  high  value  which  was  accorded 
to  the  Mosaic  Law  in  that  period,  but  it '  does  not  prove  a  direct 
influence  '  of  that  law  on  the  Imperial  legislation. 

P 


226       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND  THE 

pretation  was  the  allegorical.  This  arbitrary 
and  dangerous  habit  arose  very  naturally  in  the 
ordinary  employment  of  the  Bible  for  purposes 
of  edification;  and  it  was  confirmed,  partly  by 
the  Church's  efforts  to  explain  away  the  moral 
and  other  difificulties  of  Old  Testament  history, 
and  partly  by  the  exigencies  of  her  polemic 
against  the  Jews.  In  hostility  to  the  applica- 
tion of  Prophecy  to  Christ,  Jewish  writers  insisted 
upon  the  literal  sense  of  the  prophetic  word,  and 
confined  its  significance  to  the  history  of  Israel. 
The  Church  replied  by  allegorising  as  much  of 
the  Word  as  it  could.  Individual  morals  were, 
of  course,  directly  enforced  from  Hebrew  ex- 
amples ;  ^  but  the  early  fathers  were  interested 
in  the  Old  Testament  mainly  for  its  types  and 
predictions  of  Christ.  The  allegorical  became 
the  orthodox  exegesis,  and  was  at  last  reduced 
to  a  theory  by  Origen,^  and  elaborated  into 
a  system  by  the  school  which  he  founded. 
The  effort  to  distinguish  the  primary  sense 
of  the  text  was  indeed  not  wholly  abandoned; 
but  the  healthy  instinct  which  led  to  it  was 
too  bare  of  knowledge  and  of  insight  to  ren- 
der the  result  consistent  or  fertile.  When  the 
heretics  began  to  outdo  the  orthodox  in  alle- 
gorical and  mystical  exposition,  the  latter  saw 
the  dangers  of  the  habit  they  had  fostered  and 

1  E.g.  by  Clement  of  Rome,  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians, 

2  185-254  A.  D. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   227 

loudly  proclaimed  the  need  of  sobriety  and 
reason  in  the  pursuit  of  it.  But  the  historical 
sense  of  the  age  was  small,  and  till  the  close 
of  the  fourth  century  no  exegete  succeeded  in 
finding  his  feet  upon  a  sound  historical  basis. 
Thus  the  art  allegorising,  prompted  now  by 
dogmatic  audacity  and  now  by  apologetic  fear- 
fulness,  exercised,  with  almost  no  restraint,  its 
confusing  and  evaporating  influence  upon  the 
preaching  of  the  Christian  pulpit. 

To  the  school  of  Antioch  belongs  the  fame  of 
training  the  Church  in  sounder  principles  of 
exegesis,  and,  as  their  immediate  consequence, 
in  a  more  practical  application  of  the  Old 
Testament  to  the  life  of  the  day.  Theodore, 
afterwards  of  Mopsuestia,  was  the  greatest  repre- 
sentative of  the  former ;  John,  surnamed  Chrysos- 
tom,  the  most  illustrious  example  of  the  latter.^ 
Both  were  pupils  of  Diodorus  of  Tarsus,  who, 
though  his  works  have  perished  and  his  fame  has 
disappeared  behind  that  of  his  successors,  must 
have  been  —  by  the  characteristics  these  possessed 
in  common  and  probably  derived  from  him,  as  well 
as  by  the  few  reports  of  his  principles  which  have 
reached  us  —  a  teacher  of  unusual  originality  and 
impressiveness.2  Theodore  of  Mopsuestia  has 
been  justly   styled,    'Veteris   Testament!   sobrie 

1  Theodore,  c.  350-429 :  Chrysostom,    347-407. 

2  Caten.  Niceph.  i.  524,  according  to  which  he  declared  that 
he  much  preferred  the  historical  to  the  allegorical :  cited  by 
Diestel. 


228       MODERN   CRITICISM  AND   THE 

interpretandi  vindex ' ;  ^  he  may  even  be  hailed 
as  the  father  of  historical  exegesis.  He  did  not 
use  the  Hebrew  original,  and  had  to  work  with 
the  Greek  versions ;  but  he  was  the  first  to  break 
with  any  power  from  the  speculative  methods 
which  the  school  of  Origen  had  fastened  upon 
the  Church's  interpretation  of  Scripture;  and  the 
first  to  follow  with  some  consistency  the  lines 
of  a  historical  interpretation.  To  Theodore  the 
prophecies  and  types  of  the  Old  Testament  had, 
besides  their  references  to  the  future,  a  prior 
value  in  themselves  and  for  the  age  to  which 
they  were  delivered.  Considering  the  traditions 
which  encumbered  his  generation  and  the  know- 
ledge of  ancient  history  at  his  disposal,  Theodore's 
vision  of  the  intrinsic  worth  and  contemporary 
reference  of  the  prophetical  writings  was  only 
less  wonderful  than  the  courage  with  which  he 
asserted  the  consequences  of  this  principle  in 
his  criticism  of  the  Psalms  and  other  Scriptures.'-^ 

^  By  Sieffert  in  the  title-page  of  his  work  Theodorus  Mopsues- 
temis,  etc.,  1827. 

2  The  only  Old  Testament  work  of  Theodore's  which  is  extant 
is  that  on  The  Ttvelve  Prophets:  A.  Mai,  Nova  Pair.  Bibl.  vii. 
1854;  Migne,  Patrologia  Grceca,  vol.  Ixvi.  His  historical  expla- 
nations of  the  Old  Testament  do  not  of  course  preclude  typical 
references  to  the  New.  Old  and  New  are  part  of  the  same 
economy  of  Divine  grace.  We  hear  from  others  that  he  denied 
value  to  the  titles  of  the  Psalms  ;  that  he  referred  the  Messianic 
Psalms  to  Hezekiah  and  Zerubbabel,  leaving  only  three  with  a 
reference  to  Jesus  Christ ;  that  he  denied  prophetic  inspiration 
to  Job  and  the  Solomonic  literature;  and  rejected  Chronicles 
with  Ezra  and  Nehemiah. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   229 

His  pupils,  especially  Theodoret,  afterwards 
Bishop  of  Kyros/  carried  on  the  example  of 
their  master. 

Chrysostom  began  to  write  probably  prior  to 
Theodore.  His  first  work  on  the  Old  Testa- 
ment was,  like  that  of  the  latter,  exegetical:  a 
*  Hermeneia '  or  'Interpretation'  of  the  Prophet 
Isaiah,^  but  he  never  finished  it.  Drawn  by  his 
superb  gifts  to  the  pulpit,  he  deUvered  to  the 
Church  the  rest  of  his  Old  Testament  studies 
in  the  form  of  Homilies,  of  which  six,  still  ex- 
tant, expand  and  apply  his  views  —  already  given 
in  the  *  Interpretation '  —  of  the  first  verse  of 
Isaiah's  vision  and  of  the  Seraphs.^ 

1  Theodoret,  d.  457.  His  works  were  edited  in  four  folio 
volumes  in  1642  by  Sirmond.  The  first  two  volumes  contain 
those  on  the  Old  Testament :  vol.  i.  'Epcor-ficreis  or  QiicBstiones  to 
the  Octateuch,  Kings  and  Chronicles,  with  a  'Ep/iTji/em  or  Inter- 
pretation of  the  Psalms  and  Canticles ;  vol.  ii.  Interpretations 
of  Jeremiah,  Ezekiel,  Daniel  and  the  Twelve  Prophets,  and  an 
epitome  of  his  Interpretation  of  Isaiah.  An  adequate  sketch  of 
his  teaching  on  the  Old  Testament  is  given  by  Diestel,  Gesch.  des 
A.  T.  in  der  Christl.  Kirche,  pp.  133  ff. :  *Dass  Typus  und 
*'  Wahrheit "  oft  noch  neben  einander,  nicht  in  einander  stehen, 
und  dem  y\  yXv  laTopia  e5i5a|€j/  ein  T]fie7s  5e  jxavQavoixiv  gegenii- 
bertritt ;  dass  die  Schrift  des  A.  T.'s  so  zu  verstehen  ist  wie  sie 
den  Juden  selbst  hat  niitzen  konnen  (cf.  interrog.  52  in  Genesim).' 

2  Vol.  vi.  of  the  standard  edition  of  his  works  by  de  Montfau- 
con  (Paris  1835).  The  editor  quotes  with  approval  Tillemont's 
opinion  that  this  unfinished  work  was  not  later  than  377  A.D. 

3  Ibid.:  besides  there  are  Plomilies  and  Sermons  from  Chry- 
sostom on  Genesis  and  on  David  and  Saul  (vol.  iv.) ;  on  the 
Psalms  (vol.  v.),  on  several  Old  Testament  texts,  and  two  on 
'  the  Obscurity  of  the  Prophetic  Writings,'  with  others,  and  a 
'Hermeneia'  of  Daniel  (all  of  these  in  vol.  vi.),  and  on  the 
Books  of  the  Maccabees  (vol.  ii.). 


230       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

The  introduction  to  his  *  Hermeneia '  of  Isaiah 
defines  the  principles  of  the  new  exegesis.  The 
ministry  of  the  Prophets  to  their  own  generation 
has  never  been  more  finely  described  —  as  a 
ministry  not  only  of  judgement  but  of  love  and 
fellow-suffering.  *  Now  of  all  the  prophets  and 
saints  this  was  the  spirit :  in  disposition  towards 
them  over  whom  they  were  set  they  excelled 
the  tender  affection  of  fathers,  and  by  a  long 
way  outdid  the  sovereignty  of  nature  ...  for 
there  is  no  qualification  for  office  so  important 
as  a  soul  that  loves  wisdom  and  knows  how  to 
suffer  with  others.'  ^  It  is  the  picture  of  the 
Prophets  by  one  who  was  himself  a  prophet ;  we 
will  not  marvel  that  the  man  who  so  intuitively 
understood  his  great  forerunners  was  impelled  to 
leave  his  study  for  the  imitation  of  them  among 
his  own  people.  Chrysostom's  homilies  on  the 
Old  Testament  are  not  a  little  engaged  with 
argument  against  the  Jews,  and  in  defence  of 
predictions  of  Christ;  to  that  extent  they  are 
less  direct  than  his  magnificent  preaching  on 
the  Gospels  and  Epistles.  But  from  the  first  he 
endeavours  to  keep  allegorising  in  a  secondary 
place.     He  reckons  historical  explanation  to  be 

1  Kal  TdvTuv  5e  ruv  7rpo(pT]Twv  Kol  twu  ayiwv  toiovtov  rh  eOos  • 
trarepwv  <pi\o(TTOpyiav  Trj  irepl  rovs  apxcfxevovs  dTr€Kpv\pav  SiaOecrei, 
Kot  TTjV  rrjs  (pv(T€Ci}5  TvpauviSa  e'/c  ttoXXov  tov  ireplouTOS  virepr)K6v- 
Ticrau  .  .  .  Kol  ykp  ouSei/  ovruts  iTriT-fjSeioy  els  o-pxv^  alpeciv 
ws  ypvxh  <piX6(ro<pos  Koi  cvvaKy^'iv  iiriara/xeuTj  (vi.  2,  ed.  Mont- 
faucon). 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   231 

*  the  more  true ' ;  ^  and,  thus  discerning  the  ethical 
essence  of  the  Prophets,  he  scourges  the  vices  and 
consoles  the  sufferings  of  Antioch  with  the  words 
of  Isaiah  to  Jerusalem.  The  school  of  Antioch 
is  another  proof  of  the  principle  we  have  found 
instanced  in  our  own  time,  that  the  revival  of  a 
true  historical  criticism  means  a  revival  of  the 
practical  use  of  the  Old  Testament  in  the  Chris- 
tian pulpit.  Recognise  that  the  fundamental 
meaning  of  the  prophecies  must  be  that  which 
they  bore  to  the  living  generation  to  whom  they 
were  first  addressed ;  ^  and  you  are  at  once 
inspired  by  their  message  to  the  men  of  your 
own  time. 

In  the  Western  Church  the  influence  of  Origen 
continued  to  prevail;  and  the  interpretation  of 
the  Bible  was  not  enfranchised  from  the  alle- 
gorising methods  of  the  Alexandrian  school. 
Ambrose  and  Augustine^  appear  to  have  con- 
fined their  exegetical  work  upon  the  Old  Testa- 
ment to  the  Pentateuch,  some  of  the  historical 
Books,  the  Psalms,  Job,  and  scattered  passages ; 
upon  the  Prophets  we  have  from  them  nothing 
elaborate.  Properly,  therefore,  they  fall  outside 
the  intention  of  this  review  ;  yet  a  few  sentences 

1  Ibid.  p.  17  on  Isa.  i.  22,  'Eyci)  Se  oir^  ravTriv  aTi/JidCco  T^f 
i^-fiyrjaiv,  i.e.  the  allegorical,  koL  r^v  irepau  d\7]de(Trepav  elvat  (prj/JLi. 

2  See  the  extract  from  Theodoret  above,  p.  229,  n.  i. 

3  Besides  these  Hilary  of  Poitiers  wrote  on  the  Psalms  and 
Canticles.  See  Diestel,  Geschichte  des  A.  T.  tn  d.  Christl.  Kirche, 
p.  78. 


232        MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

may  be  devoted  to  the  general  style  of  Augustine's 
exegesis.^  As  an  interpreter,  Augustine  was 
above  all  the  mystic  and  allegorist.  It  is  true 
that  the  restlessness  and  ingenuity  of  his  mind 
were  constantly  dissatisfied  with  a  method  of 
exposition  so  cheap  and  so  easily  abused,  and 
that  his  inherited  inclination  to  allegory  was  be- 
sides frequently  arrested  by  difficulties  in  the  text 
and  history  of  Scripture  which  this  method  was 
unable  to  solve.  He  aimed  to  write  a  commen- 
tary on  Genesis  ad  litteram :  '  that  is  to  say,  not 
according  to  allegorical  significations  but  accord- 
ding  to  the  inherent  quality  of  the  transactions 
as  they  happened ' ;  ^  and  he  expressly  affirmed 
that  the  spiritual  sense  of  a  passage  ought  to 
be  drawn  from  it  'only  provided  that  the  his- 
torical  truth   has   first    been    conserved ' ;  ^   and 

1  Augustine's  works  on  the  Old  Testament  are  these  (given 
along  with  the  volume  of  the  Benedictine  edition  of  his  works  in 
which  each  occurs) :  —  vol.  i.  £>e  Genesi  contra  Manichaeos  libri 
II.;  vol.  iii.  Be  Genesi  ad  Litteram  imperfectiis  Liber  (only  some 
fifteen  pages) ;  De  Genesi  ad  Litteram  Libri  xii.  (he  explains 
the  title  in  his  Retract,  ii.  24,  thus :  id  est  non  secundum  alle- 
goricas  significationes  sed  secundum  rerum  gestarum  proprieta- 
tem ;  the  work  extends  only  to  the  expulsion  from  Eden  ) ; 
Locutionujn  libri  vii.  Genesis  to  Judges  :  Qtcestiomcm  in  Hepta- 
teuchum  lib.  vii.;  Annotatiomim  in  Job  lib.  i.;  vol.  iv.  Enarra- 
tiones  in  Psalmos ;  vol.  v.  many  sermons  on  Old  Testament 
passages;  and  vol.  viii.  the  sections  of  the  De  Civitate  Dei, 
discussed  below.  The  Enarrationes  in  Psalmos  are  translated 
in  six  volumes  of  the  Oxford  Library  of  the  Fathers  (1847-57). 

2  Retract,  ii.  24 :  see  previous  note, 

3  De  Civitate  Dei,  xvii.  3:  'audeant  sensum  intelligentiae 
spiritalis  exsculpere,  servata  primitus  duntaxat  historiae  veritate.' 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   233 

again,  '  if  any  Scripture  is  to  be  investigated, 
let  us  inquire  in  what  manner  a  thing  has  been 
said,  apart  from  the  allegorical  signification.' ^ 
These  are  sound  directions,  but  Augustine  had 
neither  the  knowledge  nor  the  temperament  to 
carry  them  out.  He  was  ignorant  of  Hebrew ;  ^ 
therefore  incapable  of  a  grammatical  exegesis, 
and  dependent  on  the  philological  fancies  of 
others.  The  difficulties,  which  his  subtle  mind 
detected  in  the  allegorising  of  his  predecessors, 
the  same  mind  solved  with  fresh  and  more 
plausible  imaginations.  It  is  true  that  he  did 
not  always  go  astray  —  though  the  credit  of  this 
was  his  own  rather  than  that  of  his  methods.  In 
so  elastic  a  system  of  exegesis,  so  magnificent 
a  genius  for  religion  could  not  fail  frequently  to 
reach  the  truth :  so  fruitful  a  spirit  was  certain 
nearly  always  to  be  edifying.  In  a  misty  atmo- 
sphere like  that  of  allegory  the  small  man  is 
lost  altogether,  while  the  large  man  often  looms 
the  larger  and  moves  majestically.  Therefore, 
however  dim  be  his  light,  the  motions  of  Augus- 
tine are  generally  worth  following.  Especially 
in  his  exposition  of  the  Psalms,  amid  not  a  Uttle 
to  amuse  and  much  to  weary,  we  find  almost 
more   that   is   suggestive  and  practical.     Again 

1  De  Genesi  ad  Litteram,  i.  2 :  *  quaeramus  quomodo  dictum 
est,  praeter  allegoricam  significationem.' 

2  Confess,  xi.  5 :  De  Sermone  in  Monte,  i.  23.  The  version 
which  Augustine  used  was  the  old  Latin  version  known  to  us  as 
the  Itala :  De  Doctr.  Christiana,  ii.  14. 


234       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

and  again  Augustine  discovers  the  essence  of 
a  Psalm ;  or  if  this  be  missed,  he  leaves  us 
with  scattered  sentences  of  glorious  insight  and 
inspiration.  Jerome/  who  adorns  a  rank  as  high 
as  Origen's  in  the  history  of  the  textual  criticism 
of  the  Old  Testament,  did  not,  in  spite  of  his 
occasional  use  of  better  methods,  escape  from 
the  orthodox  routine  of  a  subjective  and  alle- 
gorical exegesis.  His  principal  service  was  to 
recall  the  Church  to  the  original  of  the  greater 
half  of  her  Scriptures,  and  to  present  her  with 
a  Latin  version  of  the  Old  Testament  based  on 
the  Hebrew  text.  Jerome  does  not  himself  fall 
within  a  review  of  the  Church's  preaching  from 
the  Prophets;  but  for  the  next  thousand  years 
he  guided  with  Augustine  the  influence,  for  good 
and  evil,  of  the  Old  Testament  upon  the  Christian 
pulpit. 

It  was  not,  however,  in  preaching  that  during 
this  millennium  the  influence  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment was  most  effective;  but  on  ecclesiastical 
constitutions  and  in  the  defence  of  dogma.  Of 
the  first  of  these  the  growth  of  the  Canon  Law 
and  of  the  claims  of  the  Papacy  are  the  most  strik- 
ing instances;  of  the  second,  the  writings  of  the 
scholastic  theologians.  The  Canon  Law  almost 
everywhere  borrows  from  the  Hebrew  theocracy  : 
the  Papal  throne  and  its  defenders  appeal  to  the 
rights  of  the  Levitical  hierarchy,  and  to  the  High 

1  Died  420. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   235 

Priest*s  assumption  of  the  temporal  power.  The 
commentaries  of  Thomas  Aquinas  ^  on  some  of 
the  Prophets/^  while  often  clearly,  though  coldly, 
suggestive  of  truth,^  attempt  to  discover  predic- 
tions of  the  great  facts  of  the  Evangel  and  of 
all  the  chief  dogmas  of  the  Church  in  the  most 
irrelevant  passages.*  Bernard  of  Clairvaux's 
eighty-six  sermons  on  the  Song  of  Solomon  are 
representative  of  the  furor  typologicus  of  the 
time.  Yet  as  Diestel  rightly  reminds  us,^  a  great 
deal  of  the  practical  preaching  of  the  Middle 
Ages  reflects  directly  the  examples  of  Hebrew 
history,  and  the  plain  ethical  sense  of  the  pro- 
phetic writings.  And  we  must  not  forget  how 
the  Psalms,  in  the  musical  Latin  to  which  the 
Vulgate  had  set  them,  were  as  a  stream  of 
living  water  through  all  those  thousand  years, 
refreshing  personal  piety  and  the  public  worship 
of  the  Church.  Apart  however  from  such  ex- 
ceptions, the  principal  purposes  to  which  the 
Christian  Church  put  the  Old  Testament,  between 
the  disappearance  of  the  great  theologians  of  the 
fifth  century  and    the   eve  of   the   Reformation, 

1  Died  1274. 

2  See  vol.  i.  of  the  second  Venetian  edition  (1775)  of  his  works, 
comprising  commentaries  to  Job,  the  first  fifty-one  Psalms  and 
the  Song  of  Songs  ;  and  vol  ii,  commentaries  to  Isaiah,  Jeremiah 
and  Lamentations. 

3  E.g.  on  Jer.  vii.  and  xxxi. 

*  E.g.  on  Isaiah  liii.  the  phrase,  a  root  out  of  a  dry  ground., 
v/hich  he  takes  as  a  prediction  of  the  virgin  birth  of  Christ. 
5  Page  225. 


236       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND  THE 

were  purposes  typological,  ecclesiastical  and 
dogmatic.  For  her  ethics  during  the  greater 
part  of  that  period  the  Church  deserted  the 
Prophets  for  the  moralists  of  Greece  and  Rome.^ 
From  the  twelfth  to  the  fifteenth  century 
better  means  of  understanding  the  Hebrew  text 
were  gradually  acquired  by  the  Church,  and  for 
the  most  part  from  the  works  of  Jews  or  Jewish 
proselytes.  With  the  increase  of  such  instru- 
ments for  criticism,  there  arose  bolder  attempts 
at  sound  methods  of  exegesis  ;  and  by  necessary 
consequence  the  practical  use  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment exhibited  many  signs  of  improvement.^ 
It  is  now  that  we  meet  with  the  first  real  suc- 
cessor of  Chrysostom  in  the  homiletic  exposition 
of  the  Prophets.  Savonarola,^  besides  reviving 
a  pure  Gospel,  was  a  preacher  of  civic  righteous- 
ness, and  he  became  so  by  his  sermons  upon 
Micah  and  other  Prophetical  Books.*     Of  twenty- 

1  For  a  practical  instance  of  this  see  below,  on  Dante's 
De  Monarchia. 

2  The  two  names  of  this  period  which  stand  forth  before  a 
crowd  of  others  in  the  respects  above  mentioned  are  that  of  the 
celebrated  Nikolaus  of  Lyra  (d.  1340)  whose  influence  was  very 
great  on  exegesis  both  before  and  after  the  Reformation  :  cf.  the 
saying  :  '  Si  Lyra  non  lyrasset,  Lutherus  non  saltasset ' ;  and  that 
of  Reuchlin,  whose  Rudimefita  Linguae  Hebrceae  was  not  published 
till  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century:  1506. 

3  1452-1498. 

*  Works,  in  six  volumes,  1633-40 ;  Prediche  di  F.  Girolamo 
Savonarola :  edizione  Integra  .  .  .  per  cura  di  Giuseppe  Baccini : 
Florence  1889.  These  are  the  sermons  preached  in  1496.  A 
short  life  of  Savonarola  and  appendices  are  given. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   237 

nine  sermons  preached  by  him  at  Florence 
between  Easter  and  Advent  1496,  and  taken 
down  by  Ser  Lorenzo  Violi,  only  two  are  from 
New  Testament  texts,  and  one  of  these,  on  the 
Ascension,  is  largely  occupied  by  an  exposition 
of  the  story  of  Balaam.  Five  expound  the  Book 
of  Ruth,  and  thirteen  the  prophecies  of  Micah. 
The  others  are  from  texts  in  2  Chronicles,  in 
five  Psalms,  in  Isaiah  vi.,  and  in  Ecclesiastes  vii. 
In  all  of  these  sermons  the  current  politics  of 
that  year  are  dealt  with ;  and  the  teaching  of 
the  Old  Testament  is  applied  to  the  dangers 
and  to  the  vices  of  the  citizens  of  Florence. 

After  the  Reformation  the  linguistic  aids  to 
the  interpretation  of  the  Old  Testament  rapidly 
multiplied,  and  with  them  the  practice  of  a 
grammatical  and  historical  exegesis  became  pre- 
dominant. Many  of  the  leading  Reformers  were 
as  fully  acquainted  with  Hebrew  as  the  improved 
culture  of  their  time  permitted,  and  though  still 
hampered  by  the  traditional  allegorising,  they 
boldly  stated,  and  frequently  exemplified,  the 
duty  of  holding  to  the  simple  sense  of  Scripture. 
*  I  have  grounded  my  preaching,'  said  Luther, 
'  on  the  literal  word.'  ^    To  him,  as  to  Melancthon 

1  Table  Talk,  ch.  i.  His  frequently  expressed  opinions  in  this 
regard  are  summed  up  in  ch.  lix, :  *  Allegories  and  Spiritual  Sig- 
nifications, when  they  are  directed  upon  Faith  and  seldom  used, 
then  they  are  good  and  laudable,  but  when  they  are  drawn  upon 
the  life  and  conversation,  then  they  are  dangerous  and  I  am  an 
enemy  unto  them.  ...  St.  Jerome  and  Origen  (God  forgive  it 


238       MODERN   CRITICISM  AND   THE 

and  Zwingli,  allegory  was  permissible  only  as 
'  rhetoric '  and  '  ornament/  the  means  of  attracting 
common  and  uneducated  minds.  As  his  career 
advanced  he  more  fully  dispensed  with  it :  *  I 
have  shaken  it  off,  and  my  best  art  is  to  render 
Scripture  in  the  simple  sense.*  There  are  also 
real  flashes  of  historical  insight  in  his  critical 
pronouncements,  that  it  does  not  matter  much 
*  if  Moses  did  not  himself  write  the  Pentateuch  ' ; 
that  many  of  the  Prophetical  Books,  for  example 
Isaiah,  Jeremiah  and  Hosea,  contain  additions, 
and  have  received  their  present  forms  from  later 
writers  ;  and  that  the  Book  of  Job  is  not  history 
but  a  poem  or  drama.  Apart  from  the  value 
of  these  particular  utterances  the  Church  owes 
to  Luther  the  greatest  example  yet  offered  to 
her  of  the  Christian  liberty  of  a  discriminating 
judgement  on  the  Old  Testament.^    Yet  through- 

them)  holp  thereunto  that  Allegories  were  held  in  such  esteem.  .  .  . 
Now  I  have  shaken  it  off  and  my  best  art  is  Tradere  Scripturam 
siniplici  sensu,  that  is  to  deliver  the  Scripture  in  the  simple  sense  : 
the  same  doth  the  deed  :  therein  is  life,  strength,  doctrine  and 
Art ;  in  the  other  is  nothing  but  foolishness,  let  it  lustre  and  shine 
how  it  will.  St.  Austin  gave  a  rule :  Quod  Figura  et  Allegoria 
nihil  probet  sed  Histoyia^  Verba  et  Gra7nmatica,  i.e.  that  Figure 
and  Allegories  prove  nothing  at  all,  but  Historie,  Words  and 
Grammar  '  (Capt.  Henrie  Bell's  translation).  Besides  his  Trans- 
lation (1534)  Luther's  work  on  the  Old  Testament  consisted  of 
sermons  and  expositions  in  Latin  and  German  on  Genesis, 
Exodus  and  Deuteronomy ;  Isaiah,  Ezekiel,  Hosea,  Joel,  Amos, 
Obadiah,  Micah,  Jonah,  Nahum,  Habakkuk,  Zechariah,  Malachi, 
Daniel,  many  Psalms,  Canticles  and  Ecclesiastes  (all  apparently 
between  1523  and  1546). 
1  See  Lecture  i. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  239 

out  Luther  was  the  preacher  rather  than  the 
interpreter.  His  exposition,  like  his  criticism, 
of  Scripture,  if  not  dominated,  was  constantly 
interrupted,  by  his  personality  with  its  rude 
human  vigour  and  its  marvellous  experience  of 
Divine  grace.  Sometimes  it  is  the  native  Luther 
who  thus  breaks  out,  as  in  the  almost  truculent 
sentences  upon  the  Prophets,  the  Epistle  of 
James  and  the  Apocalypse;  but  far  oftener  it 
is  the  *  new  Luther,'  the  man  who  has  passed 
through  the  struggles  in  the  Erfurt  cloister,  and 
has  been  saved  by  faith.  Thus,  though  he 
violates  'the  simple  sense'  of  many  passages, 
and  overlooks  small  but  not  insignificant  points 
in  others,  he  carries  our  hearts  with  him  to  lofty 
and  far-reaching  views  of  God's  purposes  of 
salvation  as  they  lie  spread  out  across  both 
Testaments.  Kostlin,  his  principal  biographer 
in  our  time,  has  thus  justly  characterised  Luther's 
exposition :  '  The  whole  delivery  of  Luther's 
teaching  preserves  that  quality  of  fresh  life 
which  we  have  pointed  out  in  connection  with 
his  first  writings.  .  .  .  The  fundamental  doctrine 
of  salvation,  as  it  always  moved  himself,  so  in 
his  utterances  it  constantly  presses  into  the 
foreground  and  the  centre;  this  is  an  essential 
peculiarity  of  his  exposition  of  Scripture  and  of 
his  sermons.  In  the  former  he  knows  how  to 
soar  on  every  occasion  to  the  highest  points  of 
view,  and   to   spread    spirit   and   life  across  ap- 


240       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND  THE 

parently  barren  sections  of  his  course.  In  the 
treatment  of  such  scriptures  as  have  no  im- 
mediate original  connection  with  those  funda- 
mental doctrines,  as  also  in  the  definition  within 
a  text  of  those  details,  which,  in  contrast  to 
its  leading  thoughts,  have  only  a  subordinate 
importance,  the  claims  of  historical  and  linguistic 
accuracy  do  not  always  come  to  their  rights.'  ^ 

The  soundest  exegete  of  the  time  was  John 
Calvin :  considering  his  means  and  opportunities, 
we  may  call  him  the  greatest  expositor  of  all 
time.  'To  real  exegetic  skill  he  unites  the  full 
freedom  of  a  Theodore  of  Mopsuestia  with  the 
profundity  of  a  Luther.'  ^  Calvin's  knowledge  of 
Hebrew ;  ^  his  command  not  only  of  the  historic 
circumstance  but  of  the  mental  atmosphere*  of 
the  different  periods,  from  which  the  Old  Testa- 

1  Herzog's  Real-Encyclopadie,  second  ed.  ix.  72, 

2  Diestel,  op.  cit.  p.  269. 

3  Calvin  himself  makes  no  assertion  of  his  knowledge  of 
Hebrew ;  and  Simon,  the  early  critic  of  the  Pentateuch  (see 
above,  p.  33),  denied  that  he  knew  enough  for  practical  purposes. 
But  the  fact  has  been  admitted  even  by  his  enemies  — he  at  least 
is  a  Reformer  to  whom  Roman  controversialists  allow  an  adequate 
acquaintance  with  the  original  languages  of  Scripture.  Compare 
too  the  tributes  of  Diestel  and  Tholuck  to  his  linguistic  endow- 
ments. But  indeed  his  mastery  of  Hebrew,  though  never  dis- 
played, is  felt  throughout  all  his  commentaries  on  the  Old 
Testament.  Beza,  his  biographer,  after  saying  that  Calvin  was 
a  friend  of  Grynaeus  and  Capito,  adds  'seseque  Hebraicis  Uteris 
dedit.'  See  for  the  details  Calvin  Hebraisant,  by  Professor 
Antoine  J.  Baumgartner  of  Geneva  (Paris  1889),  a  very  interest- 
ing inquiry  as  to  where  and  how  Calvin  learned  his  Hebrew. 

*  Cf.  his  admission  of  the  exilic  atmosphere  of  Isaiah  Iv. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   241 

ment  arose;  his  fairness  even  to  the  confession 
of  errors  in  Scripture,  combined  with  his  healthy 
indifference  as  to  their  presence ;  ^  his  single- 
hearted  aim  to  give  the  original  meaning  of  the 
sacred  authors;  his  appreciation  of  the  essence 
of  prophecy,  not  as  prediction,  but  *  as  the 
message  of  God  to  men,'  *  the  interpreting  and 
administering  of  revelation ' ;  ^  his  contempt  for 
allegory;  ^  his  independence  of  tradition,  and 
stout  refusal  to  find  proofs  for  doctrine  in  ir- 
relevant texts ;  ^  his  sobriety  and  sense  of  propor- 
tion —  all  these  sincere  qualities  are  at  the 
command  of  a  profound  religious  insight,  and 
of  a  spirit  desirous  to  know  only  what  God  has 

1  On  Matthew  xxvii.  9:  '  Quo  modo  Hieremiae  nomen  obrep- 
serit,  me  nescire  fateor,  nee  anxie  laboro ;  certe  Hieremiae  nomen 
errore  positum  esse  pro  Zacharia,  res  ipsa  ostendit,'  '  In  what 
way  the  name  of  Jeremiah  has  stolen  in  here,  I  confess  I  do  not 
know,  nor  do  I  trouble  myself  about  it ;  that  the  name  of  Jere77iiah 
has  been  by  error  substituted  for  that  of  Zechariah,  the  thing  itself 
clearly  shows.''  On  Acts  vii.  16  —  Stephen's  statement  that 
Jacob's  and  other  patriarchs'  bodies  were  carried  to  Shechem  to 
be  buried  in  a  sepulchre  which  Abraham  bought  of  the  sons  of 
Emmor  (father  or  son  ?)  of  Sychem — Calvin  remarks,  *  in  nomine 
Abrahae  erratum  palam  esse.     Quare  hie  locus  corrigendus  est/ 

*  As  every  one  can  see,  an  error  has  been  made  in  the  name  of 
Abraham.     Wherefore  this  passage  has  to  be  corrected.' 

2  So  he  defines  it  on  i  Cor.  xii.  9;  xiv.  6. 

3  On  I  Cor.  ix,  8 :  *  Some  hairbrained  spirits  take  occasion 
from  this  to  turn  everything  into  allegories.  Thus  they  change 
dogs  into  men,  trees  into  angels,  and  all  Scripture  into  a  laughing- 
stock.' 

4  See  above,  p.  146,  his  criticism  of  alleged  Messianic  prophe- 
cies. Calvin's  exegesis  is  curiously  independent  of  his  somewhat 
rigorous  doctrine  of  Scripture. 

Q 


242       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

willed  to  say.^  Among  Calvin's  expositions 
many  moderns  give  preference  to  those  on  the 
Psalms ;  to  me  it  seems  as  if  his  interpretations 
of  the  Prophets  were  still  greater :  in  so  far  as 
with  the  latter  he  finds  more  solid  ground  in 
date  and  circumstance  for  his  original  gifts  of 
historical  exegesis.  But  on  every  Book  of  the 
Old  Testament  Calvin  is  a  commentator  whom 
neither  the  modern  exegete  nor  the  modern 
preacher  can  afford  to  neglect. 

May  I  remind  you  in  a  sentence  that  I  am 
not  now  giving  the  full  doctrine  of  Scripture 
which  the  Reformers  held,  but  that  my  purpose 
is  only  to  show  how  far  founded  upon  grammar 
and  history  and  how  far  true  to  *  the  simple 
sense'  their  exegesis  was.^  Once  more  we 
see  the  practical  effect  of  such  methods.  The 
great  exegetes  of  the  Reformation,  and  their  im- 

1  Calvin's  claim  for  himself  is  not  exaggerated  (Epistle  Dedi- 
catory to  his  Commentary  on  The  Twelve  Prophets) :  '  If  God 
has  endued  me  with  any  aptness  for  the  interpretation  of  Scrip- 
ture, I  am  fully  persuaded  that  I  have  faithfully  and  carefully 
endeavoured  to  exclude  from  it  all  barren  refinements  —  however 
plausible  and  fitted  to  please  the  ear  —  and  to  preserve  genuine 
simplicity,  adapted  solidly  to  edify  the  children  of  God,  who 
being  not  content  with  the  shell  wish  to  penetrate  to  the  kernel ' 
(Owen's  translation,  Edin.  1846). 

2  For  a  statement  of  the  Reformers'  doctrine  of  Scripture,  and 
a  discrimination  between  it  on  the  one  hand  and  the  views  of 
mediaeval  theologians  and  modern  evangelicals  and  certain  Broad 
churchmen  on  the  other,  see  an  article  by  Professor  T.  M.  Lindsay 
in  the  Expositor,  fourth  series,  vol.  x.  (July-December  1894) 
pp.  241  ff.  on  'Professor  W.  Robertson  Smith's  Doctrine  of 
Scripture.' 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    243 

mediate  followers,^  guided  a  Church  for  whose  use 
translations  of  the  Bible  were  being  made  into 
the  various  vernaculars  and  everywhere  multi- 
plied by  the  art  of  printing.  The  more  scientific 
exegesis  had  given  the  Bible  to  the  people ;  and 
the  result  was  the  practical  influence  of  the  Old 
Testament  upon  the  pulpit,  the  school  and  the 
state  to  an  extent  beyond  what  was  reached 
by  any  previous  age.  Luther  had  unfortunately 
described  the  political  activity  of  the  Prophets 
as  *so  much  hay,  straw  and  wood  among  the 
genuine  silver  and  gold'  of  their  work  —  as  if 
thier  political  messages  could  be  separated  from 
their  religion  !  Partly  because  of  the  sounder 
example  of  Calvin  in  the  historical  exegesis 
which  he  illustrated,  and  partly  because  of  a 
wider  use  of  the  Bible  in  public  worship,  the 
influence  of  the  Old  Testament  in  Switzerland 
and  other  regions  of  the  Reformed  Church,  as 
distinguished  from  the  Lutheran,  was  more 
ethical  than  it  came  to  be  among  the  Luther- 
ans themselves.  Yet  almost  everywhere  the 
Prophets  began  to  speak  to  the  new  generations. 
From  the  time  of  the  Reformation  to  our  own 
there  never  has  been  a  city  of  Protestant 
Europe  which  has  been  stirred  to  higher  ideals 
of  justice  and  purity,  without  the  rewaking  of 
those  ancient  voices  which  declared  to  Jacob  his 
sin  and  to  Israel  his  transgression.     Once  more 

1  For  a  full  list  of  these  see  Diestel,  op.  cit.  269  ff. 


244      MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

the  revival  of  a  sounder  criticism  was  followed 
by  the  revival  of  a  more  practical  preaching.  The 
fidelity  which  sought  to  discover  what  the  Pro- 
phets actually  meant  to  the  men  of  their  own 
time  was  rewarded  by  the  inspiration  of  their 
message  to  the  men  of  all  times. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  give  full  illustration  of  this 
within  the  English-speaking  Churches.  Suffice 
it  to  remember  the  earlier  Puritans  like  Henry 
Smith  with  his  *  Scriptures  for  Magistrates '  from 
the  eighty-second  Psalm,  and  his  '  Memento  for 
Magistrates '  from  the  forty-fifth ;  ^  and  the  later 
Puritans,  like  Goodwin,  whose  sermons  to  the 
House  of  Commons  on  public  occasions  were 
nearly  always  upon  Old  Testament  texts;  or 
like  Cromwell,  whose  addresses  to  his  parliaments 
so  often  started,  or  were  enforced,  from  the  same 


sources 


1  The  Sermons  of  Mr.  Henry  Smith  gathered  into  one  volume, 
with  an  introduction  by  Thomas  Fuller,  and  dedicated  to  William 
Cicill,  Lord  Burleigh,  Treasurer  of  England,  1657.  Smith  was 
'commonly  called  the  silver-tongued  preacher,  and  that  was  but 
one  metall  below  St.  Chrysostom  himself  (Fuller).  How  prac- 
tical his  preaching  from  the  Old  Testament  was  (and  the  same 
might  be  illustrated  from'  other  Puritan  preachers)  may  be  seen 
from  the  '  one  instance  of  many  of  the  great  prevalency  he  had 
with  his  auditory  '  which  Fuller  gives.  '  He  preached  a  sermon 
on  Sarah's  nursing  of  Isaac,  and  thereupon  grounded  the  general 
doctrine,  that  it  was  the  duty  of  all  mothers  to  nurse  their  own 
children,  allowing  dispensation  to  such  who  were  unsufificienced 
by  weakness,  want  of  milk,  or  any  avouchable  impediment.  He 
prest  the  application  without  respect  of  persons  high  or  low, 
rich  or  poor,  one  with  another.' 

2  Carlyle,  Cromweir s  Letters  and  Speeches,  vol.  iv. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   245 

The  rise  and  elaboration  of  the  Federal  idea 
of  Revelation/  led  in  Great  Britain  to  a  de- 
tailed extension  of  the  political  uses  of  the 
Old  Testament  in  preaching  which  lasted  even 
into  the  nineteenth  century.  In  Scotland  es- 
pecially this  was  inspired,  not  only  by  the  in- 
stitutions of  the  Law,  but  by  the  patriotism, 
national  romance  and  passion  of  the  historical 
and  prophetical  Books.  To-day  the  proudest 
memories  of  the  Scottish  people  are  associated 
with  the  struggles  and  heroisms  of  Old  Testament 
history.  It  was  not  merely  that  for  two  centuries 
the  prevailing  theology  in  Scotland  conceived  of 
God's  relation  to  man  under  the  form  of  a  cove- 
nant ;  but  as  in  Israel's  case  the  covenant  was  un- 
derstood as  national  and  it  comprised  every  public 
interest.  The  Scottish  preachers,  who  in  times 
of  persecution  taught  their  suffering  nation  to  see 
herself  in  the  Trampled  Vine,  the  Desolate  City 
and  the  Remnant  of  God's  pity  and  promise,  in 
times  of  peace  enforced  upon  every  department 
of  her  life  the  whole  righteousness  of  ancient 
Israel.  Nor  did  they  always  preach  that  legalism, 
which  being  falsely  imputed  to  Scotland  has 
moved  some^  to  call  her  in  scorn  'the  Jud^a 
of  the  West.'      It  is  true  that  they  were  some- 

1  Originating  with  the  fathers  of  the  Reformation,  but  re- 
duced to  a  system  by  Coccejus  —  Summa  dodrina  defoedere  Dei 
et  testamento  explicata,  J.  Coccejo,  1648  — and  other  seventeenth- 
century  theologians. 

2  E.g.  Heine. 


246        MODERN   CRITICISM  AND   THE 

times  dogmatically  national.  Even  the  greatest 
theologians  of  the  seventeenth  century  were  apt 
to  confine  the  covenant  to  the  visible  Church,  and 
in  the  spirit  of  Deuteronomy  to  include  within 
its  obligations  none  that  extended  beyond  the 
limits  of  their  own  nation.  The  late  Dr.  Walker, 
in  his  admirable  work  on  TJie  Theology  and 
Theologians  of  Scotland}  says  that  *  the  seven- 
teenth century  divines  were  greatly  hampered  by 
what  I  may  call  their  Judaic  theory  of  the 
world's  conversion.  Our  modern  idea  of  the 
visible  Church,  as  a  kingdom  of  faith  pushing  out 
in  bold  aggressions  on  every  side  .  .  .  aiming  at 
nothing  less  than  the  spiritual  subjugation  of  the 
world  to  the  faith  and  obedience  of  the  gospel, 
was  very  faintly  realised  in  that  earlier  period  of 
our  history.  What  our  fathers  rather  thought  of 
was  a  sort  of  expansion  of  nationalism  after  the 
Jewish  fashion,  in  which,  when  God  has  elect 
ones  among  a  people  to  be  gathered  in.  He 
takes  the  nation  into  external  covenant  with 
Himself,  and  within  the  order,  and  under  the 
ordinances  of  a  visible  Church  as  His  *'  office- 
house  of  grace,"  —  not  excluding  the  aid  extrinsic 
of  the  sword  of  the  magistrate.  ..."  To  have 
the  doctrine  of  the  covenant  preached  to  a 
nation,"  says  Rutherford,  "  and  Christ  offered  to 
them  is  to  be  the  planted  vineyard  of  the  Lord. 
The  field  is  the  field  of  the  visible  kingdom  of 

1  First  Edition,  Edinburgh,  1872,  p.  58  ff. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   247 

Christ  because  the  world  of  all  natural  men  is 
not  the  Lord's  field,  where  He  soweth  His  wheat, 
but  the  visible  Church  is  only  such  a  field."  ' 
Thus  in  modern  Scotland  fervent  Christian  men 
were  so  infected  by  formal  Judaism  as  to  fall  into 
the  error,  for  which  the  prophet  Jonah  (as  the  type 
of  Israel)  is  rebuked  and  punished  in  the  Book 
which  bears  his  name.  It  was  Thomas  Boston 
and  the  so-called  '  marrow-men  *  who  came  to  the 
rescue  of  Scotland  from  so  narrow  and  nationalist 
an  interpretation  of  the  covenant  of  grace.  *  Bos- 
ton and  the  marrow-men,'  continues  Dr.  Walker, 
*  first  of  all  among  our  divines  entered  freely  into 
the  missionary  spirit  of  the  Bible ;  were  able  to 
see  that  Calvinistic  doctrine  *  —  that  is  especially 
in  the  covenanting  principles  which  it  borrowed 
from  the  Old  Testament  —  *  was  not  inconsistent 
with  world-conquering  aspirations  and  efforts.' 

Within  the  religious  life  of  the  nation,  the 
legalism  of  the  covenanting  theology  yielded  to 
more  spiritual  forces.  Most  of  the  preachers  of 
the  Covenant,  like  the  Prophets  of  Israel,  kept 
before  their  people  the  Person  of  their  King 
rather  than  the  letter  of  His  Law.  It  was  not 
legal  obedience  they  demanded,  but  those  chival- 
rous affections  which  are  as  the  fire  to  cleanse 
national  life  and  to  enkindle  in  a  people  the 
ardours  of  sacrifice  and  service  —  *  zeal  for  the 
glory  of  God,'  *  love  to  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,' 
'  the  sole  King  and  Head  of  the  Church '  —  and 


248        MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

the  faith  that  He  is  identified  with  the  poor  and 
the  oppressed.  Of  the  Scottish  people  in  that 
heroic  age  the  saying  is  true  in  which  the  heathen 
seer  described  the  people  of  Israel : 

The  Lord  his  God  is  with  hirUy 

And  the  noise  of  a  King  is  among  them?- 

This  period  was  not  without  its  able  exegetes, 
independent  of  tradition  and  with  a  conscience  to 
interpret  Scripture  upon  such  scientific  methods 
as  were  at  the  disposal  of  their  time.^  But 
either  they  were  not  consistent  in  carrying 
out  these  methods,  or  they  were  more  or  less 
destitute  of  sympathy  with  the  religious  mean- 
ing of  what  they  treated,  and  sometimes  subject 
to  intellectual  tempers  almost  as  dogmatic  as 
the  traditional  views  which  they  abjured.  The 
period  also  produced  philosophic  critics,  who 
anticipated  not  only  many  of  the  principles, 
but  some  of  the  conclusions  of  modern  criti- 
cism.^ And  to  this  period  belongs  the  fame 
—  often  unjustly  ignored  by  the  more  scientific 
age  which  has  eclipsed  it  —  of  solid  contribu- 
tions  to   the   philology  of  the  Old   Testament,* 

1  Numbers  xxiii.  21. 

2  One  has  only  to  recall  Grotius. 

3  Like  Hobbes,  Collins  and  Spinoza.  Simon  too  started  the 
analysis  of  the  Pentateuch  before  the  end  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  and  was  followed  by  Astruc  in  the  eighteenth  (see 
above  Lecture  11.).  All  through  the  period  there  were  Critica 
Sacra  issued  by  various  scholars. 

*  Like  the   works  of  Erpenius,  GoHus,  Buxtorf,  De  Dieu, 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   249 

and  of  the  origins  of  the  modern  sciences  of 
sacred  chronology  and  archaeology-^  The  prac- 
tical preaching  of  the  period  did  not  remain  un- 
influenced by  such  essays.  The  study  of  the 
original  languages  of  Scripture,  as  well  as  of 
Syriac,  was  pursued  by  many  of  the  ordinary 
ministers  of  all  the  Protestant  Churches  in 
Great  Britain  ;  while  a  few  of  the  better-known 
names  are  still  associated  with  the  reputation  of 
high  proficiency  in  Oriental  learning.  My  own 
countrymen,  whether  harassed  by  the  persecu- 
tions of  the  seventeenth  century  or  absorbed 
by  the  reconstruction  of  their  Church  and  her 
theological  controversies  in  the  beginning  of  the 
eighteenth,  found  time  to  produce  works  both 
on  the  Hebrew  language  and  on  the  exegesis 
of  the  Old  Testament.  They  used  ahke  the 
leisure  of  exile  and  the  occasions  of  their  parish 
ministry  to  the  furtherance  of  a  scholarship 
which   more   than   once   received   the   praise   of 

Schultens  and  others  in  the  grammar  and  lexicography  of  the 
Oriental  languages. 

1  In  chronology  Scaliger's,  Lightfoot's  and  Ussher's  are  the 
foremost  names :  in  archaeology,  among  a  crowd  of  works 
the  most  famous  are  Samuel  Bocha.rt'' s /^Aa/e^  and  Canaan  1646, 
and  Hierozoicon  1663;  Reland's  Palaestina  1714,  and  other 
treatises  ;  with  the  Travels  of  Maundrell  1697,  Pococke  1737,  and 
Hasselquist  1749  ff.  Or  in  another  department  Goodwin,  Moses 
and  Aaron  1610 ;  Cunaus,  De  Rep^iblica  Hebraeortim,  libr.  iii.  ed. 
Elz.  1632;  Selden  in  De  Jicre  Naturali  et  Gentium  and  Uxor 
Ebraica,  besides  De  Diis  Syriis  and  De  Synedriis  et  Pi'aefectiiris 
Jiiridicis  Ebraeorum  ;  J.  Spencer,  De  Legibus  Hebraeoriim,  etc. 
1685;  and  Eisenmenger,  N'euentdeckten  Judenthume  1702-1711. 


250        MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

the  great  Continental  Hebraists.^  To  the  high 
zeal  and  industry  with  which  men  like  John 
Livingstone,  Brown  of  Wamphray,  Jamieson  and 
Thomas  Boston  repeated  the  examples  of  learn- 
ing afforded  them  by  the  first  Reformers  we  owe 
the  fact  that  a  knowledge  of  both  Greek  and  He- 
brew has  ever  been  required  from  candidates  for 
the  Scottish  ministry.  Nor  did  the  Pilgrim  Fathers 
fail  to  carry  across  the  Atlantic  the  scholarly 
ideals  of  the  early  Puritans.  The  first  schools 
of  divinity  in  New  England  provided  courses  of 
study  in  the  originals  of  both  Testaments,  besides 
an  introduction  to  Syriac ;  ^  and  a  succession  of 
competent  teachers  of  Hebrew  appeared  down  to 
the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century .^ 

1  The  Theology  and  Theologians  of  Scotland,  chiefly  of  the 
Seventeenth  and  Eighteenth  Centuries,  by  James  Walker,  D.D,, 
Carnwath,  Edinburgh  1872;  Lecture  i.  John  Livingstone, 
banished  under  Charles  II.,  corrected  the  proofs  for  an  edition 
of  the  wSyriac  New  Testament ;  and  revised  the  Latin  text  of  the 
Old  Testament,  intending  to  print  the  Latin  and  Hebrew  in 
parallel  columns.  His  fellow-exile,  Brown  of  Wamphray,  had 
equal  scholarship.  Jamieson  published  Spicilegia,  or  notes  on 
the  connections  between  Bible  history  and  the  history  of  Greek 
and  Latin  authors.  Above  all  Thomas  Boston,  who  mastered 
Hebrew  after  he  went  to  Ettrick,  prepared  a  work  on  Hebrew 
accentuation,  of  a  specimen  of  which  Schultens  and  Grenobius 
said  :  '  On  the  supposition  that  the  rest  of  this  book  is  equal  to 
this  sketch  it  will,  on  the  whole,  be  the  best  book  that  has  been 
written  on  this  subject.'  To  this  period  also  belongs  the  series  of 
commentaries  edited  by  Dickson,  including  Hutchison  on  the 
Minor  Prophets,  Durham  on  the  Song  of  Solomon,  and  Dickson 
himself  on  the  Psalms. 

2  New  England's  First  Fruits,  London  1643. 

3  Zeitschrift  flir  A,  T.  Wissenschaft,  viii.  (188S)  i  ff. ;  *  A.  T. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   251 

In  spite  of  the  insight  and  erudition  which 
distinguished  the  Old  Testament  scholarship  and 
preaching  of  this  period,  these  did  not  succeed 
in  establishing  the  exegesis  of  Scripture  upon 
sound  principles,  nor  give  to  the  Church  a 
clear  view  of  the  development  of  revelation 
within  Israel.  We  now  perceive  that  their  real 
value  consisted  in  the  indispensable  prepara- 
tion they  provided  for  that  modern  criticism, 
which  in  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  and  through- 
out the  nineteenth  century  has  arranged  the  Old 
Testament  upon  historical  lines  and  enabled  the 
Church  to  trace  the  real  history  of  Israel's  re- 
ligious development.  The  course  of  that  criti- 
cism we  have  already  followed  in  the  Second 
Lecture,  while  its  influence  upon  preaching  has 
been  appreciated  in  the  beginning  of  this  one. 

We  have  been  tracing  the  practical  effects  of 
a  historical  exegesis  of  the  Old  Testament  on  the 
preaching  of  the  Christian  Church.  But  our 
survey  cannot  be  closed  without  a  brief  notice 
—  all  that  our  space  permits  —  of  the  influence  of 
the  Old  Testament  upon  the  great  succession 
of  Christian  treatises  and  arguments  on  govern- 
ment which  forms  an  almost  complete  history 
of   the  political  ideal   from    Constantine   to   the 

Studien  in  America/  by  Prof.  G.  Moore  of  Andover.  Cotton 
Mather  records  that  even  women  studied  Hebrew  {Magnalia,  iii. 
23).  Moore  mentions  besides  Jonathan  Edwards'  History  of 
Redemption,  a  MS.  work  by  the  great  theologian  on  the  Messianic 
prophecies  of  the  Old  Testament. 


252        MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

period  before  the  French  Revolution.  Augus- 
tine's Z^^  Civitate  Dei ;  "DdiHtQs  De  Monarckia ;  the 
political  tracts  of  Luther  and  other  Reformers; 
the  political  prefaces  to  Calvin's  Commentaries 
and  the  chapter  on  Civil  Government  in  his  Insti- 
tutes; the  arguings  of  Knox  with  the  statesmen 
of  Queen  Mary ;  Buchanan's  De  yiire  Regniapud 
Scotos;  his  royal  pupil's  yns  Liberae  Monarchiae 
and  other  lectures  from  the  throne  to  a  murmur- 
ing people;  the  Royal  Defence  of  Salmasius; 
Milton's  answer  to  it  in  the  Defence  of  the  People 
of  England  ;  Samuel  Rutherford's  Lex  Rex —  the 
list  might  be  greatly  extended  but  is  sufficiently 
representative.  In  only  a  few  of  these  do  we 
find  any  real  attempt  to  distinguish  between 
what  was  permanently  valid  in  Old  Testa- 
ment laws  and  institutions  and  what  was  of 
transient  authority — with  such  success  as  we  shall 
presently  observe.  In  all  the  others,  on  both 
sides  of  the  great  controversy  which  runs  through 
them,  the  eagerness  of  the  disputants  to  claim 
every  plausible  precedent  and  sanction  for  their 
respective  opinions  is  too  warm  to  allow  of 
historical  discrimination.  And  therefore  it  is 
that  in  this  series  of  works  we  feel  most  acutely 
what  I  have  already  said  is  conspicuous  through 
the  whole  history  of  the  Old  Testament  in  the 
Christian  Church  —  namely,  the  strangely  varied 
character  of  the  influence  which  the  Hebrew 
Scriptures  have  exerted  upon  Christian  ethics. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   253 

In  the  De  Civitate  Dei  ^  Augustine  distinguishes 
between  the  ideal  and  the  actual  in  the  kingdom 
of  Israel.  In  fact,  he  says^  it  was  a  *  civitas 
terrena/  only  in  essence  a  '  civitas  Dei.*  How- 
ever imperfectly  Israel  carried  out  the  principles 
of  the  theocracy  revealed  to  them,  these  principles 
remain  a  political  standard  and  inspiration  for 
all  time,  a  perpetual  pattern  to  the  Christian 
State.  The  distinction  is  sound  but  vague : 
and  Augustine  had  not  the  historic  insight  to 
apply  it  in  detail.  His  allegorising  interpreta- 
tion only  increased  the  vagueness  of  the  distinc- 
tion; and  he  left  it  to  the  mediaeval  Church  with 
outlines  so  elastic  as  to  permit  the  champions 
of  the  divine  authority  of  the  Papacy  and  of  the 
Empire  to  find  within  the  Old  Testament  ex- 
ample and  sanction  for  even  the  most  arrogant 
of  their  claims.  Augustine  himself  was  in  the 
habit  of  appealing  to  the  Old  Testament  in  de- 
fence of  rigorous  measures  by  the  State  against 
heretics.  The  precedent  he  set  was  consistently 
followed  by  the  Roman  Inquisition.^ 

1  Books  xv-xvii. 

2  Diestel  {Gesch.  der  A.  T.  152  f.)  says  that  'the  whole  con- 
ception by  Charlemagne  of  the  idea  of  the  State  shows  many 
theocratic  elements';  and  refers  to  S.  Rettberg,  Kirchengeschichte 
DeutscJilands.  On  p.  153  Diestel  says  :  '  the  Decalogue  occurs  in 
the  laws  of  the  Frisians.'  It  has  been  my  duty  for  geographical 
purposes  to  go  through  the  so-called  Assizes  of  yeriisalem,  the 
collection  of  legal  works  from  the  kingdoms  of  Jerusalem  and 
Cyprus  in  the  thirteenth  century  (ed.  by  Le  Comte  Beugnot  in 
2  vols,  of  the  Recueil  des  Historiens  des  Croisades,  Paris  1841  f.). 


254       MODERN   CRITICISM  AND   THE 

In  De  Monarchia  Dante  draws  his  proofs  for 
a  temporal  power,  universal  in  its  sway,  chiefly 
from  the  moralists  of  Greece  and  Rome.  His 
claim  for  the  Empire's  independence  of  the 
Church,  and  for  the  derivation  of  its  authority 
direct  from  God,  is  based  on  the  character  and 
history  of  the  Roman  people  and  on  the  pro- 
vidence of  God  in  committing  to  them  the 
government  of  the  world.  But  he  clinches  his 
argument  with  the  facts  that  the  Son  of  God 
consented  to  be  born  into  the  Empire,  and,  by 
His  submission  to  Pilate,  as  the  executioner  of 
His  death  for  man's  salvation,  *  confirmed  the 
jurisdiction  of  the  Roman  Empire  over  all  man- 
kind.' Dante  quotes  the  Scriptures  of  the  Old 
Testament  far  less  frequently  than  the  Pagan 
philosophies;  and  then  chiefly  by  way  of  meta- 
phor and  parable.  When  he  deals  with  them 
logically,  it  is  never  to  claim  for  his  thesis  any 
sanction  from  their  theocratic  principles,  but  only 
to  answer  the  arguments  which  the  supporters  of 
the  supremacy  of  the  Church  have  drawn  from 
the  precedence  of  Levi  before  Judah,  or  from  the 
crowning  and  deposition  of  Saul  by  Samuel.^ 
In  this  we  meet  with  a  contrast  which  we  shall 

It  is  remarkable  how  this  precipitate  of  feudalism  in  the  East  is 
devoid  of  religious  argument  and  appeal.  Almost  the  only 
imitation  of  legal  tempers  or  processes,  borrowed  so  lavishly  by 
the  Canon  Law  from  the  Old  Testament,  is  the  rigorous  treat- 
ment of  heretics. —  Ltvre  de  Jean  d^Ibelin,  chap.  cxc. 
1  Book  iii.  chaps.  5  and  6. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   255 

often  see  exemplified:  between  the  defenders 
of  the  secular  power  who  find  their  arguments 
in  the  New  Testament,  and  the  champions  of 
the  supremacy  or  independence  of  the  spiritual 
power  who  chiefly  appeal  to  the  Old. 

Before  we  pass  from  the  Mediaeval  Church 
we  ought  to  note  the  influence  of  one  great 
doctrine  of  the  Prophets  upon  the  political 
ideals  of  the  age.  In  the  Eleventh  Chapter 
of  the  Book  of  Isaiah  and  elsewhere  the  gifts 
of  the  Spirit  of  God  are  predominantly  the 
qualities  of  just  monarchs  and  wise  counsel- 
lors. The  Spirit  was  the  Author  of  the  Intel- 
lect, and  more  especially  of  the  governing  and 
political  intellect:  the  spirit  of  Jahweh,  a  spirit 
of  wisdom  and  rmder standing,  a  spirit  of  counsel 
and  might,  a  spirit  of  knozv ledge  and  of  the  fear 
of  Jahweh  :  in  other  words,  ripeness  but  also 
sharpness  of  mind;  moral  decision  and  heroic 
energy ;  piety  in  its  two  forms  of  knowing  the 
will  of  God  and  feeling  the  constraint  to  per- 
form it.  We  could  not  have  a  more  concise 
summary  of  the  strong  elements  of  a  ruling 
mind ;  ^  and  there  is  perhaps  no  passage  in  the 
Old  Testament,  which  impressed  itself  more  on 
the  political  and  intellectual  symbolism  of  the 
Mediaeval  Church.     Using  it  to  interpret  Christ's 

1  See  the  present  writer's  Isaiah  i-xxxix.  in  the  Expositor's 
Bible,  pp.  179-188,  from  which  the  above  paragraph  is  mainly 
drawn. 


256        MODERN   CRITICISM   AND  THE 

promise  of  the  Paraclete  as  the  Spirit  of  Truth, 
the  Church  regarded  the  Holy  Spirit,  in  the 
words  of  Gregory  of  Tours,  as  *  the  God  of  the 
intellect  more  than  of  the  heart.'  On  the  painted 
glass  of  many  European  cathedrals  the  Dove  is 
seen  descending  upon  the  heads  of  the  doctors 
and  councils  of  the  Church  or  hovering  over  the 
figures  of  the  sciences.  Isaiah's  description  of 
the  Lord's  Anointed  was  employed  at  the  corona- 
tion of  kings  and  the  fencing  of  tribunals  of 
justice.  It  is  evidently  the  model  of  the  royal 
hymn,  Veni  Creator  Spiritus.  In  a  Greek  minia- 
ture of  the  tenth  century  the  Sacred  Dove  hovers 
over  King  David,  who  displays  the  prayer :  Give 
the  King  Thy  judgements  y  0  God,  mtd  Thy  right- 
eousness to  the  King's  son  ;  while  there  stand  on 
either  side  of  him  the  figures  of  Wisdom  and 
Prophecy.^  Henry  the  Third's  order  of  knight- 
hood, *  Du  Saint  Esprit,'  was  restricted  to  politi- 
cal men,  and  particularly  to  magistrates.^ 

From  what  has  been  said  above  of  the  dif- 
ference between  the  Lutheran  and  Reformed 
Churches  in  their  use  of  the  Old  Testament,  it 
will  be  clear  that  fewer  political  ideas  were 
taken  from  it  by  the  former  than  by  the 
latter.  Luther  uttered  some  sound  sentences  on 
the  local  and  temporary  authority  of  the  Mosaic 
Law.     *  We   must   and   do   reject   and   contemn 

1  Didron,  Christian  Iconography,  Eng.  trans,  i.  432. 

2  Cf.  the  Story  of  St.  Dunstan  related  in  Didron,  op.  cit.  i.  426. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   257 

those,  that  so  highly  boast  of  the  rights  and 
proceedings  in  Moses'  Laws  {Judicialid)  in 
temporal  affairs,  for  we  have  our  Imperial  and 
Countrie  Laws  under  which  we  Hve  and  whereto 
we  are  sworn.  .  .  .  Moses'  Laws  bound  and 
obliged  only  the  Jews  in  that  place  which  God 
made  choice  of.  .  .  .  Therefore  let  us  recommend 
and  leave  Moses  to  his  Laws,  excepting  only  the 
Moralia,  which  God  hath  planted  in  Nature,  as 
the  Ten  Commandments,  which  concern  God's 
true  worshipping  and  service,  and  a  civil  life.'  ^ 
This  is  sound,  but  when  Luther  proceeds  to 
depreciate  the  political  teaching  of  the  Prophets  ^ 
as  so  much  *  straw,  hay  and  wood,'  we  feel  an 
evil  example,  and  are  grateful  to  the  founders 
of  the  Reformed  Church  that  they  did  not  propa- 
gate it.  In  his  appeal  to  the  Christian  Nobility 
of  the  German  Nation,  Luther  attacks  the  claims 
of  the  Papacy  and  Roman  priesthood,  which,  as 
we  have  seen,  were  largely  supported  on  Old 
Testament  texts  and  instances.  He  has  to  prove 
the  priesthood  of  all  behevers,  and  he  does  so 
naturally  from  the  New  Testament.  Like  Dante 
in  the  De  Monarchia,  he  uses  the  Old  Testament  ^ 
to  rebut  the  claim  of  the  Church  that  the 
Emperor  because  crowned  by  the  Pope  must  be 
subject  to  the  latter.     The  exodus  of  Israel  from 

1  Table  Talk,  chap,  xii.,  first  paragraph,  Capt.  Henrie  Bell's 
translation,  1652.  2  ggg  above,  p.  243. 

^  For  example,  from  the  cases  of  Samuel  and  Saul,  and 
Nathan  and  David  :  An  deji  Christlichen  Adel  Deutscher  Nation. 


258        MODERN   CRITICISM  AND   THE 

Egypt  and  her  redemption  from  Babylon  were 
to  all  the  Reformers  a  type  of  the  enfranchise- 
ment of  the  Church  from  the  power  of  Rome.^ 
In  these  cases  the  rights  of  the  Church  are  the 
rights  of  the  common  people  in  face  of  their 
tyrants. 

Calvin's  Institutes  are  dedicated,  with  a  pre- 
fatory address,  to  Francis  King  of  the  French ; 
his  commentary  on  Isaiah  to  Edward  vi.  of 
England;  that  on  Jeremiah  to  the  Elector 
Frederick;  and  that  on  the  Minor  Prophets 
to  King  Gustavus  of  Sweden.  In  these  Pre- 
faces Calvin  points  out  that  the  monarch  must 
labour  for  the  word  of  God  as  essential  to 
the  welfare  of  his  realm.  He  illustrates  from 
the  Old  Testament  that  kings  are  the  nursing 
fathers  of  the  Church;  and  that  the  Church  of 
the  majority,  as  in  France,  is  not  necessarily  the 
real  Church  of  God :  the  true  prophets  were 
often  opposed  to  the  priesthood  in  Israel,  to  the 
kings,  and  to  the  bulk  of  the  nation.  It  is 
the  prophetical  writings  which  are  most  worth 
the  study  of  rulers  :  these  should  take  as  their 
example  the  few  kings  of  Israel  who  were  on 
the  side  of  the  prophets.  Calvin  treats  of  Civil 
Government  in  the  last  chapter  of  the  Institutes. 
From  both  Testaments,  but  chiefly  from  the  Old, 

1  Cf.  Luther's  tractate  on  The  Babylonian  Captivity  of  the 
Church,  and  Aurifaber's  preface  to  the  Table  Talk,  near  the 
beginning. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   259 

he  proves  its  lawfulness  and  its  distinction  from 
the  spiritual  kingdom  of  Jesus  Christ.  In  God's 
providence  all  forms  of  government  have  been 
established,  and  it  is  impossible  to  say  which 
is  the  best.  Calvin  himself  prefers  the  aristo- 
cratic '  with  curbs ' ;  and  notes  that  what  God 
established  in  Israel  was  '  an  aristocracy  border- 
ing on  popular  government.*  To  be  successful 
a  civil  government  must  make  piety  and  right- 
eousness its  first  care  :  this  is  proved  from  Old 
Testament  precepts,  and  principally  from  the 
Prophets.  Can  magistrates  then  shed  blood  ? 
They  must  restrain  crime  and  avenge  the  suffer- 
ings of  the  righteous :  in  certain  cases  they  ought 
to  go  to  war;  and  they  have  the  right  to  levy 
taxes.  With  regard  to  laws  Calvin  is  with 
Luther :  the  views  of  those  '  who  deny  that  any 
commonwealth  is  rightly  framed  which  neglects 
the  law  of  Moses '  are  *  stupid  and  false.'  The 
judicial  and  ceremonial  laws  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment were  of  passing  authority.  Only  the  moral 
law  of  God  is  binding  on  us :  wherever  national 
laws  are  framed  after  this  rule,  they  should  not 
be  condemned  by  us.  That  Christians  may 
appeal  to  magistrates  and  laws  is  proved  from 
Paul's  example  and  from  some  of  his  precepts. 
The  righteousness  of  going  to  law  in  certain  cases 
is  argued  in  a  most  Christian  and  reasonable 
manner,  very  properly  from  the  New  Testament 
rather   than   from   the   Old,   for   it   was   in   the 


26o        MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

former  that  the  advocates  of  non-resistance  in 
Calvin's  time  claimed  to  find  the  sanction  for 
their  opinion.  From  the  Old  Testament^  Calvin 
curiously  seeks  to  prove  that  tyrants  are  ap- 
pointed of  God,  and  that  it  is  a  Christian  duty 
to  obey  them  —  except  when  they  order  us  to  do 
what  God  has  expressly  forbidden. 

Calvin  emphasised  from  the  Old  Testament 
the  duty  of  the  civil  magistrate  to  cut  off  the 
wicked.  Unfortunately  the  Protestant  Church 
too  much  imitated  that  of  Rome  in  extending 
her  vengeance  to  heretics  and  unbelievers ;  and 
upon  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic  appealed  to  the 
practice  of  the  rulers  of  Israel  in  defence  of  their 
excommunication  from  civil  rights  of  persons 
who  differed  from  orthodox  opinions,  and  in 
defence  of  the  murder  of  witches. 

In  Great  Britain,  after  the  Reformation,  the 
political  influence  of  the  Old  Testament  chiefly 
appears  in  the  constant  controversies  between 
the  Divine  Right  of  Kings  and  the  Rights  of  the 
People.  The  Scottish  contributions  to  this  argu- 
ment are  well  represented  by  Knox's  debate  with 
Secretary  Lethington  and  other  statesmen  of 
Queen  Mary,  by  Buchanan's  De  Jure  Regni  apud 
Scotos,  and  by  Rutherford's  Lex  Rex,  Knox,  in 
his  arraignment  of  Queen  Mary,  had  argued  on 
the  ground  that  the  Law  of  Moses  was  binding 
on  Christians.     Where  it  decreed  that  idolaters 

1    I  Sam.  viii.  TI-17,  and  Jer.  xxvii.  5-8,  12. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  261 

should  be  put  to  death,  Christians  ought  to  apply 
it  to  those  who  institute  or  practise  the  mass. 
By  accepting  his  Scriptural  premises  —  they  were 
unfortunately  the  common  belief  of  the  age  — 
Lethington  gave  himself  into  Knox's  hands. 
But  Knox  employed  the  Law  of  Moses  less  than 
he  did  the  history  of  Israel.  Here  he  found 
numerous  precedents  for  the  arraignment  of 
sovereigns  by  God's  prophets  and  for  their  pun- 
ishment by  the  people.  To  statements  by  Calvin 
and  others,  that  the  Old  Testament  contained 
proofs  of  the  lawfulness  of  even  tyrannical  govern- 
ments and  of  the  people's  duty  of  obedience  to 
them,  Knox  answered  that  Calvin  had  been 
arguing  against  the  anarchical  Anabaptists  and 
he  quoted  instances  of  the  overthrow  of  Jewish 
kings  by  the  people  because  of  idolatry.  Knox's 
principal  resource  was  thus  Old  Testament  his- 
tory; that  of  his  opponents,  on  the  contrary, 
was  found  among  the  New  Testament  precepts 
of  obedience  to  an  authority  so  tyrannical  as 
that  of  the  Roman  Emperors.  The  same  con- 
trast appears  in  the  use  of  Scripture  in  the 
dialogue  De  Jtire  Regni  apud  Scotos,  between 
George  Buchanan  and  his  royalist  opponent. 
The  latter  pleads  Paul's  commands  to  Christians 
to  honour  and  pray  for  tyrants  like  Tiberius, 
Caligula,  Claudius,  Nero.^  Buchanan  has  no 
difficulty  in  answering  him  upon  New  Testament 
1  §  Ixii. 


262        MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

principles;  but  it  is  from  the  history  of  Israel 
that  he  proves  that  kings  ought  to  be  punished 
for  evil-doing  by  the  authority  which  created 
them.  In  Israel  that  authority  was  God,  in 
Scotland  the   people.^ 

The  same  contrast  is  again  visible  in  the 
English  forms  of  the  controversy.  Take  a  judi- 
cious advocate  for  the  divinity  of  monarchy  like 
Hooker,^  or  some  preposterous  ones  like  that 
redoubtable  royal  lecturer  James  the  First,  and 
like  Sir  Robert  Filmer  in  his  Patriarcha,  or  the 
Natural  Power  of  Kings.  The  persistence,  with 
which  they  all  seek  to  explain  away  their 
opponents'  reasons  from  the  Old  Testament, 
proves  that  it  was  upon  this  part  of  Scripture 
that  the  champions  of  democracy  still  chiefly 
sharpened  their  weapons.  In  the  first  of  his 
Two  Treatises  of  Government  John  Locke  has 
little  difficulty  in  disposing  of  Filmer's  ingenious 
arguments  from  Adam  and  the  Kings  of  Israel; 
in  doing  so  he  exhibits  the  most  reasonable 
treatment  of  Old  Testament  history — taking  for 
granted  its  reality  throughout  —  which  the  litera- 
ture of  Christendom  had  yet  produced. 

The  contrast,  which  all  those  illustrated,  might 
also  be  traced,  if  there  were  space,  in  the  contro- 
versy between  Salmasius  and  Milton,  or  in  Ruther- 
ford's Lex  Rex;  and  even  through  the  divines  of 
the  Stuart  and  Hanoverian  houses.     Everywhere 

1  §  Ixii.  2  Eighth  Book  of  the  Ecclesiastical  Polity. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   263 

the  advocates  of  the  Divine  Right  of  Kings  relied 
upon  New  Testament  texts  —  as  Pilate's  words 
to  Christ,  I  have  power  to  crucify  or  release  thee  ; 
Paul's,  the  powers  that  be  are  ordained  of  God ; 
Peter's,  the  King  as  supreme.  Whereas  the 
Scriptures,  which,  after  the  fashion  of  the  times, 
popular  champions  like  Milton  and  Rutherford 
preferred  against  them  were  chiefly  drawn  from 
the  Old  Testament ;  from  the  elections  of  Saul  and 
David,  their  rebukes  by  Samuel  and  Nathan,  the 
subjection  of  the  king  to  the  covenant,  the  part 
played  by  the  people  in  the  coronation  and 
deposition  of  the  kings,  as  well  as  from  many 
passages  of  the  Prophets.  When  we  read  such 
arguments,  and  remember  that  the  Book  from 
which  they  were  drawn  was  in  the  hands  and 
hearts  of  the  common  people,  we  appreciate  how 
much  of  the  liberty,  which  the  period  secured  for 
us,  is  due  to  the  Old  Testament. 

It  is  obvious  that  the  distinction  between  the 
Old  and  New  Testaments  which  this  controversy 
emphasised,  is  no  artificial  one.  The  political 
circumstances  of  the  two  dispensations  were 
entirely  different.  Through  Old  Testament  his- 
tory we  follow  the  growth,  the  opportunities,  the 
judgement  of  a  nation.  The  purpose  of  God  is 
a  people ;  religious  discipline  and  experience, 
religious  duty  and  hope,  are  almost  entirely 
identified  with  national  rights  and  responsibi- 
lities, and  the  struggle  for  national  liberty  and 


264       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

national  righteousness.  But  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment we  do  not  deal  with  a  nation  at  all.  It 
is  an  exceptional  state  of  affairs;  in  which 
religion  neither  is  associated  with  popular 
struggles,  nor  assumes  the  responsibilities  of 
government,  but  the  sole  political  duty  of  the 
believer  is  reverence  to  the  powers  that  be:  the 
guardians  of  the  Providential  Peace  in  which 
the  Church  of  Christ  was  to  spread  across  the 
world.  This  is  a  state  of  affairs  not  so  sym- 
pathetic with  modern  history  as  the  other  was; 
and  therefore  it  is  that  in  this  province  of 
religion  the  Hebrew  Prophets  have  been  felt 
by  the  moderns  to  stand  nearer  to  them  than 
the  Apostles  do.  The  Apostles  were  sojourners 
and  pilgrims:  the  Prophets  were  citizens  and 
patriots.  It  is  a  heavenly  country  to  which  the 
former  look  forward  :  the  latter,  as  we  have  seen,^ 
without  any  promise  of  the  life  to  come,  labour 
for  the  establishment  of  the  kingdom  of  God 
within  the  conditions  of  their  own  national 
history.  And  for  the  same  reason  is  it  that  the 
Old  Testament  —  though  of  course  upon  a  plane 
of  public  life  different  from  that  on  which  our 
forefathers  applied  it  —  must  always  have  a  func- 
tion to  discharge  supplementary  to  the  more 
glorious  office  of  the  Gospels  and  Epistles.  As 
Maurice  puts  it,  we  must  count  '  paramount  the 
duty  of  vindicating   the  Old  Testament  as   the 

1  Above,  pp.  185  f. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   265 

great    witness    for    liberty  .  .  .  the    witness   of 
the  sacredness  of  this  earth.'  ^ 

We  have  already  seen  how  the  historical 
interpretation  of  the  Prophets  with  which  Modern 
Criticism  provides  us,  renders  more  effective  this 
practical  application  of  them  to  the  social  ethics 
of  our  time. 

n.     The  Political  and  Social  Preaching  of 
the  Prophets. 

The  rapid  survey,  which  we  have  just  made, 
of  the  influence  of  the  Prophets  upon  the  social 
ethics  of  Christendom,  has  shown  us  that  the 
chief  example  to  ourselves  of  their  preaching 
to  their  own  times  lies  in  what  may  be  called 
the  double  ethic  of  their  patriotism  :  their  faith  in 
the  essential  sacredness  of  their  national  history 
and  their  conscience  of  their  people's  sins  and 
duties. 

The  Prophets'  treatment  of  their  national 
history  is  instructive  from  more  than  one  point 
of  view.  The  facts  which  they  quote  from 
Israel's  past  are  in  agreement,  so  far  as  they  go, 
with  the  witness  of  the  historical  Books;  only 
the  writers  of  the  latter  record  a  very  great  deal 
more,  both  of  individual  and  national  experience, 
than  the  Prophets  deem  necessary  in  order  to 
exhibit  the  Divine  meaning  of  that  history.     For 

1  Life,  ii.,  p.  490 ;  cf.  4,  52,  454,  etc. 


266       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

instance,  none  of  the  eighth  or  the  seventh 
century  prophets  lay  stress  upon  the  physical 
miracles  which  the  historians  of  the  early  history 
of  Israel  record.  They  confine  themselves  to  the 
political  and  ethical  facts  :  the  covenant  between 
Jahweh  and  Israel,  the  redemption  from  Egypt, 
the  guidance  to  Canaan,  the  overthrow  of  the 
heathen,  the  growth  of  ethical  institutions  and 
the  inspiration  of  strong  personalities.^  I  do 
not  say  that  the  Prophets  were  ignorant  of  what 
we  call  the  miracles  of  the  early  history,  or  that 
they  denied  them.  They  had  the  stories  of  these 
before  them,^  and  they  believed  the  stories.  But 
in  preaching  to  their  own  generation  they  almost 
wholly  confined  themselves  to  the  indubitable 
outlines  of  the  early  history  and  to  its  political 
and  ethical  significance.  Now  in  such  a  selection 
by  the  first  representatives  of  his  office  the 
preacher  of  to-day  will  find  an  example  of  the 
discrimination  which  he  may  show  in  the  em- 
ployment, for  practical  purposes,  of  the  origin 
and  the  making  of  Israel.  But  what  we  are  now 
concerned  with  is  not  so  much  the  exact  amount 
of  the  prophetic  testimony  to  the  early  history 
of  Israel  as  the  fact  that  what  the  Prophets  select 
from  it  for  preaching  to  their  own  times,  is  just 
the  kind   of   national  memory  and   tradition   by 

1  So,  for  instance,  in  Amos  ii.  9-1 1  ;  cf.  Hos.  ii.  8,  14  ff.  (Eng.) 
xi.  I  ff. ;  Isa.  v.  i  ff. ;  Jer.  ii. 

2  E.g,  Amos  iv.  II  ;  Hosea  xii.  3  ff. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   267 

which  every  nation  may  prove  the  sacredness  of 
its  own  career.  To  Amos  nationality  is  what  it 
was  more  explicitly  to  Cromwell  and  to  Mazzini, 
a  divine  fact.  Have  I  not  brought  Israel  out  of 
the  land  of  Egypt  and  the  Philistines  from  Caphtor 
and  Aram  from  Kirf^  All  nations  are  by  the 
calling  and  providence  of  Almighty  God.  What 
the  Prophets  saw  in  Israel's  making  is  what  every 
people  with  the  Prophets'  faith  may  see  in  their 
own  past.  *  The  Bible  of  every  nation  is  its 
history.' 2  'What  are  all  our  histories  but  God 
manifesting  Himself,  that  He  hath  shaken  and 
tumbled  down  and  trampled  upon  everything 
that  He  had  not  planted  .^  .  .  We  are  a  people 
that  have  had  a  stamp  upon  them  from  God  .  . 
whose  appearances  and  providences  among  us 
are  not  to  be  outmatched  by  any  story.'  ^ 

As  with  the  past  of  a  nation,  so  with  its  future. 
Israel  were  the  first  of  peoples  to  develop  the 
sense  of  a  spiritual  mission  to  the  world ;  and  they 
did  so  not  in  the  day  of  their  strength,  but  in  that 
of  their  weakness  and  servitude.  Their  Exile 
brought  them  into  touch  with  many  oppressed 
nationalities;  and  like  their  symbol,  Jonah,  on 
the  helpless  ship  with  the  heathen  sailors,  they 
were  made  to  feel  their  common  humanity  with 

1  Amos  ix.  7.  2  Carlyle. 

3  Cromwell,  Letters  and  Speeches,  by  Thomas  Carlyle,  Speech 
IV.  Cromwell  called  the  Old  Testament  the  '  recapitulation  of 
Providence,'  meaning  God's  providence  not  only  of  Israel  but 
of  all  nations. 


268        MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

the  Gentiles  whom  they  had  despised.  It  was  in 
this  fellowship  of  suffering  that,  for  the  first  time, 
they  conceived  their  full  mission  to  the  ends  of  the 
earth  :  I Jahweh  have  called  thee  in  righteousness y 
and  will  hold  thine  hand  and  will  niotddtJiee^  and 
give  thee  for  a  covenaiit  of  the  peoples  and  for  a 
light  to  the  nations  :  to  open  the  blind  eyes,  to  brifig 
out  the  prisoners  from  the  prison ^  and  them  that 
sit  in  darkness  out  of  the  house  of  bondage}  The 
most  comforting  of  all  the  promises  uttered  in 
connection  with  this  world-wide  mission  is  one 
whose  tender  words,  though  justly  claimed  for 
himself  by  every  broken  individual  who  turns 
to  God,  were  principally  intended  for  the  weak 
and  flickering  nationalities  threatened  with  ex- 
tinction by  the  strong  empires  of  antiquity.^ 
Behold  my  Servant  ,  .  .  I  have ptit  my  Spirit  upon 
him  .  .  .  he  shall  bring  forth  justice  to  the  nations. 
A  bruised  reed  shall  he  not  breaks  and  the  dimly 
burning  flax  shall  he  not  quench  ;  he  shall  bring 
forth  justice  according  to  truth.  He  shall  not  fail 
nor  be  abashed  till  he  have  set  justice  on  the  earth  ; 
and  the  isles  shall  wait  for  his  teaching.^  To 
every  modern  people  who  have  been  conscious 
of  their  nationaHty  as  a  Divine  fact,  and  of  their 
gifts  and  opportunities  as  a  Divine  call,  this 
vision,  granted  first  to  Israel,  has   never  failed. 

1  Isa.  xlii.  6  f. 

2  See  A.  B.  Davidson,  Expositor,  2nd  Series,  viii.  pp.  364  £E. 

3  Ibid.  vv.  1-4. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   269 

Nor  has  it  been  less  sure  because,  like  the  exiled 
Israel,  a  nation  has  grown  weak  and  contemptible. 
While  Italy  was  still  divided  and  subject  to 
many  tyrannies,  the  despised  of  Europe  and  the 
mockery  of  her  own  past,  her  prophet,  who  almost 
alone  believed  in  her  restoration,  dared  to  add 
to  it  a  prophecy  of  her  mission  to  the  world. 

National  religion,  then,  according  to  the  Pro- 
phets of  Israel,  is  the  recognition  of  God's 
hand  in  the  nation's  history ;  the  acceptance  of 
great  ethical  institutions  and  personalities  as 
from  His  hand  ;  the  instinct  and  effort  of  moral 
progress ;  the  sense  of  a  mission  to  the  world ; 
the  acknowledgment  of  the  Divine  calling  of 
other  nations;  and  sympathy  in  particular  with 
such  as  are  weak  and  oppressed.  Such  an 
ideal  of  religion  the  Prophets  urged  against 
two  popular  heresies:  a  non-ethical  confidence 
in  the  national  and  established  ritual ;  and  a 
base  •  other-worldliness '  which  sought  in  necro- 
mancy knowledge  of  the  future  and  counsel  for 
the  present.  To  both  of  these  the  Prophets 
were  inexorably  hostile.  For  both  were  pagan. 
Both  were  founded  on  false  ideas  of  God. 
And  both  withdrew  the  emphasis  of  religion 
from  conduct  and  the  national  life.  /  will  have 
mercy  and  not  sacrifice}  Though  ye  offer  me  your 
burnt  offerings  and  your  meat  offerijigs  I  will  not 
accept  them  ;  take  thou  away  from  me  the  noise  of 

1  Hos.  vi.  6. 


270         MODERN   CRITICISM  AND   THE 

thy  songSy  I  will  not  hear  the  melody  of  thy  viols. 
Btit  let  Justice  roll  down  as  waters,  and  righteous- 
ness as  a  perennial  stream}  And  when  they  shall 
say  unto  you  :  seek  unto  them  that  have  familiar 
spirits,  that  chirp  and  mutter ;  should  not  a  people 
seek  unto  their  God?  On  behalf  of  the  living 
should  they  appeal  to  the  dead?  To  the  Torah 
and  the  Testimony  !'^  —  the  Living  Word  which 
concerns  itself  with  living  men. 

On  those  curiously  sympathetic  tendencies  the 
Prophets'  preaching  has  been  justified  by  Chris- 
tian experience.  The  rational  and  ethical  ele- 
ments of  religion  have  always  been  imperilled 
by  those  errors:  whose  affinity  has  been  proved 
not  less  by  their  similar  effects  than  by  their 
not  infrequent  alliance  in  the  same  persons  or 
schools  of  religion. 

The  second  quality  of  the  Prophets'  ideal  of 
national  religion  is  their  strong  conscience  of 
their  people's  sins  and  civic  duties.  This  is 
the  harder  and  the  more  misunderstood  half 
of  patriotism.  The  ears  of  every  people  are 
open  to  the  celebration  of  its  history  as  divine, 
and  even  the  baser  hearts  among  it  may  be 
flattered  by  the  idea  of  its  mission  to  the 
world.  But  the  true  test  of  national  religion  is 
sensitiveness  to  the  national  sins.  This  was  the 
test  between  the  false  and  the  true  prophet  in 
Israel;     it    is    our    test    as    preachers    to    our 

1  Amos  V.  22-24.  2  isa,  yiii.  19,  20. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  271 

own  day.     Is  our  office  servile  to  the  pride  and 
material  interests  of  our  nation?     Or  do  we  feel 
with    trembling    that    the    ethical    element    in 
patriotism  is,  in   the   strong   tumult   of  all   the 
others,  the  most  easily  neglected,  and  therefore 
the   most  in    need   of    emphasis   by  a  people's 
prophets.      For    its   sake    and    God's    the    true 
patriot    must    sometimes    run    counter    to    the 
currents  of  popular  enthusiasm,  and   be  willing 
to   incur   the   charges   of   treason   to   the  com- 
monwealth,  and    of    cowardice    in    face  of  the 
national   destiny.      We   have   nothing   to   dread 
from  that  fear  of  kings   which   once  made  so 
many  prophets  false;  but  we  have  all  the  more 
to  watch  that  we  do   not   become   flatterers   of 
the  common  people.     If  we  are  to  defend  their 
rights,  we  must  be  brave  to  declare  their  sins; 
the  offices   of  the   Prophet  and   of  the  Dema- 
gogue  are  absolutely  irreconcileable.      To  most 
preachers,   however,  such   temptations   as   I  de- 
scribe  arise  not   from    the   nation   as   a   whole, 
but  from  the   religious   section   of  it   to   which 
they    belong.      There    is    danger    that    a    man 
grow  silent   upon   social    ethics   out   of    regard 
either  to  the  ecclesiastical  policy  of  his  denomi- 
nation, or  to  its  financial  interests.     In  all  these 
forms   the  temptation  to  become  a  popular  or 
fashionable  preacher  —  whether   the  fashion  be 
one  of  religious  temper  or  of  political  opinion  — 
is  so  subtle,  and   so  many  succumb   to  it,  that, 


272       MODERN   CRITICISM  AND   THE 

as  we  value  the  honour  of  our  calling  and  are 
jealous  of  our  loyalty  to  God,  we  ought  persist- 
ently to  steep  ourselves  in  the  just  and  stern 
spirit  of  our  great  forerunners. 

To  go  into  detail  upon  the  subjects  of  the  civic 
preaching  of  the  Prophets  would  amount  to  an 
exposition  of  the  larger  part  of  the  Books  of 
Amos,  Hosea,  Isaiah,  Micah  and  Jeremiah.  Let 
these  four  general  statements  suffice.  First,  the 
careers  of  the  Prophets  were  contemporaneous 
with  the  development  of  Hebrew  society  from  an 
agricultural  to  a  commercial  condition,  and  with 
the  rise  of  the  City.  The  social  evils,  therefore, 
with  which  the  Prophets  deal,  are  those  still 
urgent  among  ourselves.^  Second,  the  Prophets, 
while  inculcating,  from  God's  treatment  of  the 
nation,  tenderness  and  pity  in  the  nation's  treat- 
ment of  their  poor  and  enslaved,  dwell  with  still 
greater  emphasis  upon  the  need  of  justice  and 
equity.  We  enjoy  a  legal  freedom  and  justice 
far  beyond  those  of  the  Oriental  society  which 
the  Prophets  addressed ;  but  no  man  can  deny 
the  frequent  want  of  honour  and  equity  among 
us  in  such  social  relations  as  are  outside  of  the 
laws.  Third,  the  Prophets,  when  enforcing  reli- 
gious observances  and  institutions,  do  so  most 
frequently  for  social  ends,  or  with  regard  to  the 
interests  of  the  poorer  classes  of  the  comm unity .^ 

1  See  The  Book  of  the  Twelve  Prophets,  \.  ch.  iii. 

2  E.g.  The  Sabbath  :  Amos  viii.  5 ;  Isa.  Iviii,,  cf.  vv.  6  and  7 
with  13  and  14. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   273 

And  fourth,  there  is  the  emancipation  of  the 
individual  from  a  merely  national  religion  :  the 
soul  awaking  to  feel  its  solitary  relation  to  God 
and  its  independence  of  the  community  only  to 
discover  a  new  duty  and  loyalty  to  the  latter, 
that  extends  to  the  sharing  of  their  sorrows  and 
bearing  of  their  sins  —  all  the  higher  sense  of  in- 
dividuality resulting  in  a  truer  altruism  as  we 
have  already  seen  instanced  in  Jeremiah.^  There 
could  not  be  preaching  more  relevant  to  the 
conditions  and  temptations  of  our  own  life.^ 

All  these  features  except  the  last  might  be  illus- 
trated from  the  works  of  almost  every  Prophet,  and 
they  are  equally  conspicuous  in  the  codification 
of  prophetic  teaching,  which  we  find  in  Deuter- 
onomy. In  this  great  system  of  national  religion 
the  domestic  and  the  civic  duties  are  enforced 
in  no  legal  spirit  ;  but  with  the  high  morality 
and  full  tenderness  of  the  prophetic  temper. 
There  are  few  of  the  rites  and  institutions  of  a 
nation  —  the   Sabbath,  Sacrifice,    Prophecy,   the 

1  Above,  pp.  165  ff. 

2  There  is  a  fine  passage  by  the  great  philanthropist  Lord 
Shaftesbury  on  the  civic  teaching  of  Jeremiah  {Life  by  Hodder, 
ill,  454) :  '  If  for  political  and  public  purposes  there  can  be  in  the 
Bible  one  book  more  valuable  than  another  to  throw  light  on  the 
days  we  live,  it  is  Jeremiah.  He  was  not  always  "  looking  to 
the  sun,"  but  he  was  looking  to  the  earth,  entreating,  preaching, 
warning,  threatening,  promising;  and  he  was  in  consequence 
regarded  as  a  bore  and  a  blunderer.  Yet  if  he  had  been  attended 
to,  Jerusalem  might  have  survived  for  many  centuries ;  and  cer- 
tainly she  would  have  been  spared  the  indescribable  sufferings  of 
soul  and  body  that  followed  her  destruction  by  Nebuchadnezzar.' 

S 


274       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

sustenance  of  the  Priesthood,  Justice,  the  Mon- 
archy, War,  Agriculture,  Trade,  and  Money  — 
which  are  not  defined  by  Deuteronomy  with 
special  regard  for  the  poor  among  thy  brethren  :  the 
widow,  the  orphan,  the  slave  and  the  stranger  withhi 
thy  gates.  And  the  sum  of  the  whole  is  not  love 
to  God  alone,  but  love  to  God  and  man.  Hear,  O 
Israel,  thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God  with  all 
thy  heart  and  all  thy  sonl  and  all  thy  strength, 
and  thy  neighbour  as  thyself. 

III.    Other  Features  of  the  Preaching  of  the 
Prophets. 

Passing  now  from  the  civic  to  other  features 
of  the  Prophets'  preaching  to  their  own  times,  we 
must  not  omit  to  notice  one,  which  is  not  only 
historically  remarkable  in  the  religious  leaders  of 
a  Semitic  people,  but  of  some  practical  interest 
to  ourselves.  I  mean  the  attitude  of  the  Pro- 
phets to  what  we  call  miracles. 

When  St.  Paul  defined  the  contrast  between 
the  Greek  and  the  Jewish  minds  in  the  words : 
the  Jews  require  a  sign  :  and  the  Greeks  seek  after 
wisdom}  he  struck  a  characteristic  of  the  whole 
race  to  which  the  Jews  belong.  The  Semites 
have  always  been  notorious  for  unwillingness  to 
receive  moral  truth  upon  its  own  evidence  and 
without  the  attestation  of  some  physical  wonder  — 
not  necessarily  of  a  kind  akin  to  the  truth  which 

1  I  Cor.  i.  22. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   275 

it  was  supposed  to  confirm.  Wellhausen  has 
remarked  this  quality  in  the  early  stories  of 
Pagan  Arabs ;i  and  to  this  day  'miracles,'  so  far 
from  being  a  difficulty  to  catechumens  of  the 
Christian  religion  in  Damascus  or  Cairo,  are 
regarded  by  them  as  indispensable  concomitants 
of  the  Divine  Word.  We  all  know  that  it  was  not 
otherwise  in  Israel.  The  Old  Testament  contains 
a  number  of  stories  according  to  which  the  Word 
of  God  was  accompanied  with  signs  following, 
and  these  signs  were  not  always  like  the  bene- 
ficent miracles  of  our  Lord,  consonant  in  character 
to  the  message  with  which  they  were  associated.^ 
It  was  a  recognised  thing  in  Israel  that  when  a 
prophet  arose  he  should  give  the  people  a  sign 
or  wonder.  And  Christ  Himself  describes  this 
attitude  of  the  nation's  mind  in  the  words  (not 
without  reproach),  Except  ye  see  signs  and 
wonders,  ye  will  not  believe? 

All  the  more  striking,  therefore,  is  the  absence 
from  the  teaching  of  the  Prophets  of  the  eighth  and 
seventh  centuries  of  all  miracles  in  the  technical 
sense  of  the  word,  and  of  all  appeal  to  miracle.* 
This  absence  is  complete  except  for  the  single 
and  very  ambiguous  offer  by  Isaiah  of  a  sign  to 

1  Reste  arab.  Heidentumes,  p.  131. 

2  E.g.  the  signs  which  Moses  gave  on  his  first  mission  to 
Pharaoh  in  presence  of  the  King. 

^  John  iv.  48. 

*  I  speak  now  of  the  discourses  of  the  Prophets  and  not  of 
the  narratives  appended  to  them. 


\ 


276       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

the  obdurate  Ahaz.^  Now  such  a  silence  on 
*  miracles  '  was  not  due  to  the  Prophets'  disbelief. 
The  Prophets  shared  the  faith  of  their  time  in 
the  possibility  of  miracles,  and  in  the  stories  of 
their  ancient  history  which  recorded  'miracles.' 
The  true  explanation  is  given  in  the  Book,  which 
is  a  summary  of  the  prophetic  doctrine  on  the 
rites  and  institutions  of  Israel.  The  thirteenth 
chapter  of  Deuteronomy  takes  for  granted  the 
power  to  give  signs  and  wonders  on  the  part  of 
diny  prophet  or  dreamer  of  dreams.  But  it  denies 
that  signs  and  wonders,  however  real,  can  attest 
the  prophet's  message  as  the  word  of  God.  This 
message  must  be  judged  by  its  own  character. 
If  it  tempts  to  idolatry,  its  prophet  is  a  false 
prophet  and  must  be  put  to  death,  notwithstand- 
ing whatever  miracles  he  may  have  worked.  God 
can  have  permitted  these,  only  to  test  His 
people's  loyalty.  This  is  the  explanation  of  the 
abstinence  from  appeal  to  miracle  which  dis- 
tinguishes the  great  writing  prophets.  They  will 
have  their  message  travel  in  the  greatness  of  its 
own  strength :  prove  itself  Divine  on  the  credit 
of  the  high  religion  and  morality  which  are  its 
substance,  and  be  vindicated  by  the  historical 
events  which  it  brings  to  pass.  Does  it  reveal 
the  will  of  God  }  Jahweh  God  does  nothing,  hut 
He  first  revealeth  His  secret  to  His  servants  the 
prophets.'^     Does  the  prophet's  message  of  God 

1  Isaiah  vii.  ^  Amos  iii.  7. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   277 

agree  with  God's  revelation  of  Himself  in  history? 
Two  men  cannot  come  together  except  by  pre- 
vious appointment:^  the  harmony  of  the  pro- 
phetic word  with  the  divine  deed  is  the  proof  of 
a  purpose  common  to  both.  Does  the  word  pro- 
duce and  mould  that  which  it  predicts?  Then  it 
is  divine :  it  shall  not  reticryi  unto  me  void,  but  it 
shall  accomplish  that  which  I  please  a7td  it  shall 
prosper  in  the  thing  whereto  I  sent  it?  It  is  thus 
never  to  *  miracle/  in  the  narrow  sense  of  that 
term,  that  the  Prophet  appeals  as  the  proof  of 
his  message,  but  to  history.  Political  facts  now 
within  his  people's  ken,  or  shortly  to  come  to 
pass  —  by  these  he  is  content  to  be  judged.'^  He 
asserts  his  power  of  prediction :  he  makes  pre- 
dictions which  are  fulfilled.  Yet  he  does  so  not 
through  any  magic  vision  of  the  future,  but  by 
inference  from  the  religious  principles  with  which 
God  has  inspired  him,  and  by  application  of  these 
to  the  political  circumstances  and  probabilities  of 
his  own  time.  This  I  have  elsewhere  illustrated 
in  detail  by  a  review  of  Isaiah's  predictions 
concerning  the  deliverance  of  Jerusalem.* 

1  Amos  V.  3.  On  this  whole  passage  see  Book  of  the  Twelve 
Prophets^  i.  pp.  82,  89  f. 

2  Isaiah  Iv,  11. 

8  As  for  example,  Isaiah  when  asserting  the  inviolableness  of 
Jerusalem :  or  the  great  Prophet  of  the  Exile  when  he  proves 
the  divine  origin  of  earlier  predictions  of  the  end  of  the  Exile 
by  their  fulfilment  in  the  victorious  progress  of  Cyrus  against 
Babylon. 

*  Isaiah  i-xxxix.  ch.  xxiv. 


278       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

To  me  this  independence  of '  signs  and  wonders,' 
when  we  place  it  in  contrast  to  the  universal 
custom  of  Semitic  soothsayers  and  the  common 
expectancy  of  all  Israel,  is  but  another  proof  of 
the  divinity  of  the  Prophets'  teaching.  Miracles, 
as  Christ  Himself  has  shown  us,  may  be  given  to 
attest  a  Divine  Revelation,  but  they  are  not  nec- 
essary to  the  highest  faith ;  and  in  the  case  of 
the  Prophets  their  absence  is  a  stronger  seal,  than 
their  presence  would  have  been,  of  the  Divine 
origin  of  prophecy. 

We  have  seen  ^  that,  in  appealing  to  the  pres- 
ence of  God  in  the  history  of  their  people,  the 
prophets  of  the  eighth  and  seventh  centuries 
selected  as  its  evidences  not  so  much  the  record 
of  physical  marvels  which  it  contained,  as  the 
clear  lines  of  religious  guidance,  political  growth 
and  moral  inspiration.  In  the  same  fashion  they 
treated  the  history  of  their  own  times ;  and  saw 
the  Divine  not  so  evidently  in  its  exceptions  and 
catastrophes  of  natural  order,  as  in  its  gradual 
development  through  poHtical  events  and  ethical 
issues  to  the  manifest  judgements  of  God.  To 
them  Jahweh  is  a  God  of  law  and  order :  and 
they  delight,  as  Isaiah  does,  to  reveal  Him  in 
the  great  commonplaces  of  experience  and  to 
illustrate  the  regularity  of  His  methods  in  history 
by  the  regularity  of  His  methods  in  nature.^ 
Thus,  whether  in  the  ethical  or  in  the  physical 

1  Above,  pp.  265  f.     2  See  especially  Isaiah  xxviii.  throughout. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   279 

sphere,  we  find  their  conception  of  Him  to  be 
that  of  Mishpat ;  according  to  Isaiah  He  is  El 
Mishpat,  the  God  who  works  by  principle  and 
law.  And  it  is  this,  their  instinct  and  conviction 
of  seeing  the  Divine  in  process  rather  than  in 
interruption,  in  law  rather  than  in  'miracle/  in 
method  rather  than  in  catastrophe,  which  makes 
them  appear  so  modern  and  which  undoubtedly 
engages  for  them  the  intellectual  as  well  as  the 
moral  sympathies  of  the  present  day. 

But  it  is  time  to  pass  from  the  doctrines 
of  those  preachers  who  are  our  own  greatest 
standards  and  examples,  and  to  consider  the 
living  aids  which  they  contribute  to  the  style 
and  the  temper  of  preaching.  Schleiermacher 
is  the  only  great  preacher  of  the  century  who 
would  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, judging  it  to  stand  to  Christianity  in 
the  same  relation  as  Paganism  does.  *  For  our 
ethics,'  he  says,  *  the  Old  Testament  is  entirely 
superfluous.'  We  perceive  the  historical  in- 
justice of  such  a  view  ;  but  Dr.  John  Ker  has 
also  remarked  its  evil  effect  upon  Schleier- 
macher himself  as  a  preacher.  *  One  cannot 
but  see  that  Schleiermacher's  style  has  suffered 
from  his  neglect  of  the  Old  Testament.'  How 
much  of  force  and  charm,  of  passion  and  of 
poetry,  have  all  other  great  preachers  derived 
from  the  Hebrew  Scriptures !  An  old  German 
writer  has  said  that  *  Holy  Writ  should  be  our 


28o       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND  THE 

grammar  and  our  dictionary,  out  of  which  all 
the  moods  of  Christian  speech  should  grow.' 
The  advice  is  sound,  if  we  fulfil  it  not  in  the 
pedantry  of  the  letter^  but  in  the  spirit:  not  in 
the  servile  and  barren  repetition  of  Bible  texts 
whether  in  preaching  or  praying  ;  but  in  the 
imitation  of  those  tempers  and  affections  which 
mould  the  style  of  the  sacred  writers,  and  of  that 
labour  which  they  put  forth  upon  their  art. 
What  may  our  preaching  not  learn  from  the 
Prophets  as  to  conciseness :  as  to  the  worth  of 
phrase ;  as  to  concreteness  in  our  teaching ;  as  to 
the  use  of  the  circumstance  and  events  of  our  or- 
dinary life ;  as  to  the  use  of  nature  and  history ;  as 
to  the  duty  of  calling  things  by  their  right  names ; 
as  to  the  effort  to  bring  grace  and  music  into  what 
we  say ;  as  to  the  urgency  which  is  upon  all  living 
truth  and  the  passion  to  win  men  which  is  the 
heart  of  preaching.  What  preacher,  who  is  a 
student  of  the  Old  Testament,  can  fail  to  be 
infected  by  the  courage  of  the  Prophets,  and  by 
their  downright  realism  ^  —  a  courage  and  realism 

1  As  for  instance  Mohammedans  base  the  sciences  of  Gram- 
mar, Rhetoric,  Logic  and  Poetry  wholly  upon  the  Koran. 

2  '  Truth  is  what  this  people  first  require,  and  therefore  the 
revelation  of  the  Lord  will  in  the  first  instance  be  the  revealing 
of  the  truth.  Men  who  will  strip  pretence  off  the  reality  of  things ; 
men  who  will  call  things  by  their  right  names ;  honest  satirists 
and  epigrammatists  —  these  are  the  bearers  of  God's  revelation. 
For  it  is  one  of  the  means  of  Divine  salvation  to  call  things  by 
their  right  names,  and  even  in  God's  revelation  epigrams  have 
their  place.'  —  On  Isaiah  xxx. :  p.  226  of  Isaiah  i-xxxix.  {Exposi- 
tor's Bible). 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   281 

which  are  frequently  disguised  in  our  English 
version:  but  the  careful  student  of  the  original 
discovers  them,  and  they  thrill  him  to  the  heart. 
Do  not  believe  that  the  end  of  an  accurate 
study  of  the  Hebrew  language  is  simply  fami- 
liarity with  a  number  of  grammatical  forms  more 
or  less  obscure.  Painstaking  students  are  other- 
wise rewarded.  It  is  they  who  lay  their  hands 
on  the  prophet's  heart  and  feel  it  beat;  it  is 
they  who  across  the  ages  see  the  very  features 
of  his  face  as  he  calls ;  it  is  they  into  whom  his 
style  and  his  music  pass. 

But  the  ultimate  fountain  of  the  prophetic 
preaching  is  the  passion  to  win  men.  This  is 
the  secret  both  of  the  pathos  and  the  splendours 
of  its  style.  To  the  Prophets  preaching  was  no 
mere  display,  but  a  sore  battle  with  the  hard 
hearts  of  their  contemporaries,  in  which  the 
messenger  of  the  Lord  worked  with  the  pity  of 
his  weakness  upon  him,  at  a  supreme  cost  to  him- 
self and  conscious  that  he  must  summon  to  his 
desperate  task  every  resource  of  feeling  and  of 
art.  Go  and  tell  this  people :  Hear  ye  indeed  but 
understand  not:  and  see  ye  indeed  but  perceive  not. 
The  harvest  is  pasty  the  summer  is  ended,  and  we 
are  not  saved.  Is  there  no  balm  in  Gilead  and  no 
physician  there  ?  Why  then  is  not  the  health  of 
the  daughter  of  my  people  recovered?  Theti  I 
said,  I  will  not  make  mention  of  Him  nor  speak 
any  more  in  His  Name.      Yet  it  is  in  mine  heart 


282       MODERN   CRITICISM  AND  THE 

as  a  burning  fire  shut  7ip  in  my  bojies^  and  I  weary 
myself  to  hold  it  in  but  cannot  stay.  Comfort ye^ 
comfort  ye  my  people,  saith  your  God:  speak  upon 
the  heart  of  Jerusalem ,  and  cry  tmto  her  that  her 
warfare  is  accomplished,  that  her  iniquity  is  par- 
doned. The  Voice  said,  Cry ;  and  I  said,  '  What 
shall  I  cry  f  All  flesh  is  grass  and  all  the  goodli- 
ness  thereof  is  as  the  flowers  of  the  field'.  The 
grass  may  wither,  the  flower  fade,  but  the  Word 
of  our  God  shall  stand  for  ever. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   283 


LECTURE   VIII 

THE  CHRISTIAN  PREACHER  AND  THE  BOOKS 
OF  WISDOM 

We  have  now  reached  the  last  department  of 
our  survey,  that  group  of  writings  which  are 
known  as  the  Books  of  Wisdom  —  Job,  Proverbs 
and  Ecclesiastes.  Here  as  elsewhere  in  the  Old 
Testament,  the  Christian  preacher  has  questions 
of  historical  criticism  to  encounter.  But  either 
the  answers,  which  modern  critics  offer  to  these 
questions,  are  now  generally  accepted  by  the 
common  sense  of  Christians,  —  as  for  instance 
the  ideal  interpretation  of  the  Book  of  Job  and 
the  date  of  Ecclesiastes.  Or  else  the  questions 
themselves,  where  still  unanswered,  have  little 
relevance  to  the  practical  use  of  the  writings  — 
as  for  example  the  integrity  of  the  two  Books 
just  named.  In  the  literature  of  Hebrew  Wis- 
dom, the  difficulties  of  the  preacher  arise  rather 
from  problems  that  are  religious.  The  pres- 
ence in  these  Scriptures  of  doubt  and  specu- 
lation, of  revolt  against  views  of  Providence 
presented  in  other  Scriptures;  of  indifference 
to  those  national  aspects  of  Israel's  religion,  in 


284       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

which  the  essence  of  Prophecy  lies;  and  of  an 
ethical  teaching  which  is  apparently  utilitarian 
■ — such  are  the  problems  which  beset  a  Chris- 
tian's use  of  the  Books  of  Wisdom.  We  shall 
best  approach  the  solution  through  a  study  of 
the  school  of  religious  teachers  out  of  which 
the  Books  took  their  rise. 

We  have  already  seen  that  in  the  Providence 
of  God  a  large  part  of  the  development  of  Israel's 
religion  was  achieved  through  the  conflict  and 
mutual  reaction  of  two  religious  schools  or 
tempers  —  the  Prophetic  and  the  Priestly.  Now 
besides  these  two,  which  between  them  represent 
the  growth  of  the  national  religion  up  to  the 
Exile,  there  was  a  third  class  or  guild,  that  of 
the  Wise  Men,  definite  enough,  as  early  as 
Jeremiah's  time,  to  be  named  along  with  the 
Priests  and  the  Prophets.^  Before  the  Exile 
they  are  not  mentioned  so  frequently  as  the 
latter,  and  Jeremiah  appears  to  speak  of  them 
with  impatience,  and  as  if  they  were  hostile 
to  the  prophetic  word.^  Yet  they  worshipped 
Jahweh,  and  are  described  as  claiming  to  have 
his  Torah  or  Revelation  with  themselves.  They 
are  not  charged  with  idolatry,  nor  with  magic 
and  soothsaying.  The  opinion  is  therefore  pro- 
bable, that  they  were  men  of  influence  who  took 
no  part  in  the  strife  between  the  Prophets  and 
the  rest  of  Israel,  but  who  found  their  interests 

1  J  er.  xviii.  i8.  ^  Ibid.  viii.  8 ;  ix.  22 ;  xviii.  18. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   285 

and  activities  in  the  sphere  of  practical  morals.^ 
By  more  than  one  modern  they  have  been  called 
the  Humanists  of  Israel.  Such  men  could  bide 
their  time.  Whatever  their  attitude  to  the  Pro- 
phets had  originally  been,  as  the  teaching  of  the 
latter  survived  the  conflicts  of  the  generations 
to  whom  it  first  appeared,  and  as  its  principles 
became  an  accepted  part  of  the  national  religion, 
the  Wise  Men  would  assimilate  from  it  those 
elements  —  and  they  were  not  few  —  which  were 
most  in  harmony  with  their  own  religious  temper : 
such  as  the  main  doctrines  of  monotheism,  the 
ethical  reasonableness  of  God's  judgements,  the 
immutableness  of  His  laws  both  in  nature  and 
history.  When  the  succession  of  the  Prophets 
came  to  an  end;  that  is  to  say,  when  Israel 
ceased  to  enjoy  the  political  freedom  and  respon- 
sibility which  were  the  indispensable  occasion  of 
the  Prophet,  and  developed  into  a  vehicle  of 
religious  truth  through  the  centuries,  then  the 
Wise  Men  came  to  their  kingdom.  Their 
didactic  temper,  their  instinct  for  handing  down 
the  experience  of  the  past  to  the  rising  genera- 
tion, found  its  opportunity.  But  they  could  not 
remain  mere  teachers  and  traditionalists.  The 
body  of  religious  experience  and  doctrine,  which 
they  accumulated,  of  itself  raised  questions,  in 
face  especially  of  the  defeat  and  suffering  which 
Israel's  faith  encountered  from  her  Babylonian 

1  C£.  Wildeboer,  Lit.  des  A.  T.,  p.  367. 


286       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

and  Persian  lords.  And  as  time  went  on  there 
shot  across  it  new  lights  from  alien  religions, 
with  which  the  Jews  in  their  great  Diaspora 
came  into  contact.  Breezes,  not  always  the 
healthiest,  blew  upon  Judaism  from  abroad. 
Doubt,  question,  research  and  even  revolt 
became  inevitable.  The  Wisdom  of  Israel  grew 
speculative  and  even  defiant,  as  well  as  didactic 
and  traditional. 

We  cannot  state  the  development  of  Hebrew 
Wisdom  in  a  form  less  vague;  we  are  without 
the  data  for  an  exact  history.  It  is  possible  to 
give  the  stages  of  the  growth  of  the  Law  of 
Israel;  it  is  not  possible  to  give  those  of  the 
growth  of  Israel's  Wisdom.  The  mass  of  it 
seems  to  be  post-exilic.  Ecclesiastes  is  undoubt- 
edly late,^  the  Prologue  to  the  Proverbs  cannot 
be  much  earlier,  and  the  Book  of  Job  may  spring 
from  any  date  between  the  Exile  and  300  b.  c. 
Yet  the  last-named  is  at  least  founded  on  a  pre- 
exilic  tradition,^  it  is  possible  that  several  of  the 
collections  of  the  Book  of  Proverbs  were  com- 
plete before  the  Exile,  and  very  probable  that 
they  contain  sayings  from  the  earlier  life  of  the 
people.^ 

1  The  language  appears  the  latest  of  all  the  Old  Testament^ 
while  the  political  conditions  which  it  reflects  are  those  of  the  end 
of  the  Persian,  or  beginning  of  the  Greek,  Period.  Ecclesiastes 
is  now  generally  referred  to  the  third  century  b.  c. 

2  Ezek.  xiv.  14. 

^  See  A.  B.  Davidson, '  Proverbs  '  in  Encyclopedia  Britannica, 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   287 

The  character  of  the  teaching  of  the  Wise 
may  be  more  clearly  defined  in  comparison  and 
in  contrast  with  that  of  the  Prophets.  I  said  that 
the  Wise,  whatever  may  have  been  their  original 
attitude  to  the  Prophets,  assimilated  in  time  the 
elements  of  the  prophetic  monotheism.  But  it 
is  possible  to  say  more  than  this,  for  in  truth 
the  origins  of  every  tendency  which  Hebrew 
Wisdom  developed  after  the  Exile  are  to  be 
found  in  Hebrew  Prophecy  before  the  Exile. 
Does  the  Book  of  Proverbs  count  knowledge  as 
the  essence  of  virtue }  Even  in  Hosea  the 
Prophets  had  been  laying  emphasis  upon  the 
duty  of  knowing  God  in  His  character  and  pur- 
poses for  men  ;  ^  and  knowledge  forms  one  of  the 
bases  of  the  doctrine  of  Deuteronomy.  Do  the 
authors  of  the  Book  of  Proverbs  enjoin  and 
practise  the  systematic  teaching  of  the  young? 
The  authors  of  Deuteronomy  had  already  shown 
them  the  example.  Moreover,  some  of  the  Pro- 
phets, as  for  instance  Isaiah  in  the  close  of 
Chapter  xxviii.,  discourse  in  the  very  style 
of  the  Wise  Men;  that  is,  by  parable  and  epi- 
gram, with  shrewd  and  gnomic  phrases;  and  seek 
to  illustrate  the  wisdom  of  Providence  by  the 
wisdom  of  the  Divine  processes  in  nature.     In 

ninth  ed. ;  but  on  the  other  side  Toy's  Introduction  to  Proverbs 
in  the  International  Scientific  Commentary. 

1  This  prophetic  preparation  for  the  Wise  Men's  theory  of 
knowledge  has  been  overlooked  by  Professor  Toy;  see  his  Intro- 
duction to  Proverbs,  p.  xvi. 


288       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND  THE 

almost  every  prophet  there  is  a  sense  of  the  unity  of 
the  Reason  which  pervades  all  things  ;  it  becomes 
more  and  more  articulate  from  Amos,  through 
Isaiah,  though  the  writer  who  added  to  the  Book 
of  Amos  the  famous  apostrophes  to  the  creative 
power  of  Jahweh,^  and  through  Jeremiah,  to  the 
great  Prophet  of  the  Exile.  These,  and  no  Greeks, 
were  the  teachers  of  him  who  wrote  the  great 
psalm  of  Wisdom  in  the  Eighth  of  Proverbs. 
Even  for  the  processes  of  speculation  and  of 
doubt  which  they  carried  to  such  daring  degrees, 
the  Wise  found  precedents  in  the  experience  of 
some  of  the  most  constructive  of  the  Prophets. 
Job's  challenges  to  the  Almighty  are  partly 
anticipated  by  the  bold  questions  of  Jeremiah  ; 
and  in  Habakkuk  we  perceive  the  beginnings  of 
that  scepticism  of  faith  with  its  solution  in  patient 
endurance  of  wrong  and  loyalty  to  God  —  Watch 
for  the  Vision  for  it  shall  come  aiid  shall  not  tarry ^ 
now  thejnst  man  shall  live  by  his  faithfulness  — 
which  we  feel  at  the  heart  not  only  of  Job,  but 
of  Ecclesiastes.2  In  their  interests  and  in  their 
doctrines  the  Wise  were  the  Prophets'  heirs. 

And  yet  though  they  thus  inherit  from  the 
Prophets  many  sympathies  and  even  doctrines, 
the  Wise  Men  differ  from  the  Prophets  in  the 
style,  temper  and  standpoint  of  their  genius. 
The  gift  of  the  Prophet  is  vision,  but  the  genius 

1  Book  of  the  Twelve  Prophets,  i.  pp.  201  £f. ;  ii.  p.  8,  n.  5. 

2  Ibid.  pp.  136,  140  £f. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  289 

of  the  Wise  Man  is  experience  born  of  insight 
and  observation.  Both  insist  upon  Law  and 
declare  what  must  be.  But  while  the  Prophets 
for  the  most  part  look  forward  and  tell  the  people 
what  shall  come  to  pass  because  God  has  such  a 
character  and  such  a  purpose,  the  Wise  Men 
look  back  and  tell  what  shall  come  to  pass 
because  under  God  it  has  always  been.  Both  in- 
sist upon  righteousness.  But  while  the  Prophets 
look  forward  to  those  ideals  of  justice  and 
mercy  which  have  never  yet  been  fulfilled  on 
earth,  the  Wise  Men  feel  beneath  them  the 
great  commonplaces  of  moral  reward  and  retri- 
bution, which  actually  work  themselves  out  in 
the  experience  of  men.  And  so  (as  a  rule) 
while  the  Prophet  is  passionate,  the  Wise  Man 
is  shrewd.  While  the  Prophet  calls  to  swift 
warfare  for  God,  the  Wise  Man  speaks  of  the 
slow  discipline  of  life,  with  its  results  in  wisdom, 
counsel  and  *  cunning.'  There  are,  of  course, 
exceptions.  Many  of  the  Prophets,  as  we  have 
seen,  illustrate  the  results  of  wisdom  in  the 
ordinary  politics  of  their  day,  and  sometimes 
employ  the  Wise  Men's  style  of  writing.  Two  at 
least  of  the  Wise  Men,  the  poet  who  composed 
the  eighth  chapter  of  Proverbs,  and  the  religious 
genius  who  gave  us  the  Book  of  Job,  have  all  the 
Prophet's  gift  of  vision.  But  in  the  main  the  two 
classes  are  distinct  —  as  distinct  as  the  temper  of 
hope  is  from  the  temper  of  experience. 


290       MODERN   CRITICISM  AND   THE 

Again,  the  scope  of  their  respective  interests 
was  not   the  same.     The   Prophets  have  set  to 
them  the  task  of  winning  Israel's  faith  for  the  unity 
of  God ;  but  for  the  Wise  that  faith  is  won,  and 
they  take   it   for   granted.     The   Prophets   have 
to  combat  idolatry;   but  by  the  Wise  the  idols 
are   ignored   as   if  they   had   never   existed.     It 
is   an   agony   to   the   Prophets   to  establish   the 
righteousness    and   wisdom   of   God;    with    the 
Wise   Men   these  are   an  axiom.     A  great  deal 
of   this  difference   must  have  been   a  difference 
of  epoch,  and   of   the   historical   tasks  lying  re- 
spectively to  their  minds.      The  passion  of   the 
Prophets  arose  from  their  being  watchmen  and 
even  martyrs  for  truth  not  yet  accepted  by  the 
conscience  of  the  people ;   the  more  quiet  temper 
and  methods  of  the  Wise  were  due  to  the  fact 
that  the  common  sense  of  Israel  acknowledged 
the  principles    from    which    they   worked.     The 
one   class   are   a   body   of    men   wrestling   with 
their  contemporaries ;  the  other  a  body  of  teachers 
directing   their  younger   disciples.      About   the 
former   is  all   the   eagerness   of  the  dawn;    the 
latter  have  on  them  something  of  the  placidity  of 
the   afternoon.     Nay,  round  one  at  least  of  the 
Wise  Men  the  twilight  has  already  fallen;    and 
Ecclesiastes  gropes  among  deeper  shadows  than 
those  from  which  the  morning  star  of  prophecy 
at  first  arose.     Yet  to  this  distinction  also  there 
is  an  exception,  for  Job  contends  with   his  con- 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   291 

temporaries  as  valiantly  as  Jeremiah.  With  him 
the  Spirit  of  prophecy  beats,  and  breaks  away 
from  the  conventional  religion  of  Israel  as  power- 
fully as  with  Amos  or  Isaiah.  It  was  a  right 
instinct,  therefore,  which  led  the  early  Church  to 
count  Job  among  the  Prophets. 

Again,  the  Prophets,  as  we  have  seen,^  were 
intensely  national.  You  remember  what  patriots 
Isaiah  and  Jeremiah  were;  how  in  particular 
they  loved  their  own  Jerusalem;  and  how  clear 
to  us  her  aspect  shines  in  many  of  their  visions. 
We  see  her  walls,  her  public  places,  her  house- 
tops. We  are  admitted  to  the  intrigues  of  her 
political  parties,  her  throne-chamber,  her  Temple. 
We  can  trace  the  march  of  foreign  foes  through 
the  land,  see  the  trails  of  fire  and  smoke  they 
leave  behind  them,  and  hear  them  speaking 
across  the  walls  of  the  capital  with  its  timid 
defenders.  And  these  are  but  instances  of  the 
particular  and  national  temper  of  the  Prophets. 
Throughout  it  is  God's  love  for  Israel  and  Israel's 
destiny  in  the  world  on  which  they  delight  to 
dwell.  But  all  this  patriotism  and  noise  of 
running  history  are  absent  from  the  Books  of 
Wisdom.  It  is  probable  indeed  that  the  secular 
sorrows  of  Israel  are  reflected  in  the  sufferings 
of  Job.'^  But  neither  there  nor  in  the  Book  of 
Proverbs  is  Israel  or   Judah  or   Jerusalem  once 

1  Lecture  vii. 

2  Davidson's  Introduction  to  Job,  Ca77ibridge  Bible,  p.  xix.  f. 


292       MODERN   CRITICISM  AND  THE 

mentioned.  The  author  of  Ecclesiastes  takes 
Solomon,  King  in  Jerusalem^  only  as  a  type 
of  the  particular  aspect  of  Wisdom,  which  he 
illustrates.  Except  in  the  titles  of  the  Book 
of  Proverbs  no  monarch  is  named,  no  country 
and  no  city.  Politics  are  indeed  discussed  :  the 
wilful  ways  of  kings  and  the  fickleness  of  the 
crowd.  The  Wise  Man  speaks  everywhere  from 
the  midst  of  the  people.  There  are  descriptions 
of  the  life  and  scandals  of  a  great  city:  its 
drunkards,  its  scorners,  its  simple  youths  and 
public  temptresses  :  more  vivid  than  in  any  pro- 
phet. But  all  is  human  and  universal.  Those 
streets  so  full  of  temptations;  those  corners 
with  their  scoffers  and  sots ;  those  gamblers  and 
wantons ;  those  oppressed  poor  whose  oppression 
is  their  poverty  —  they  are  not  only  Jerusalem. 
To-day  they  are  Vienna,  and  Paris  and  London 
and  New  York.  Into  his  description  of  Job's 
disease  the  poet  may  have  wrung  the  sufferings 
of  Israel ;  but  what  the  patriarch  deplores  is  the 
human  commonness  of  his  fate,  and  it  is  by  the 
strength  of  a  man's  conscience  that  he  throws 
out  his  challenges  in  the  face  of  the  Almighty. 
Thus  the  preacher  may  work  through  the  Books 
of  Wisdom,  finding  only  the  immutable  elements 
of  human  experience  in  sin  and  sorrow,  the  brev- 
ity of  life  and  the  certainty  of  death,  the  inevi- 
tableness  of  doubt  and  the  conflict  of  faith  with 
stern  facts. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   293 

In  dealing  with  the  separate  Books  and  their 
value  to  the  Christian  preacher,  I  have  time  only 
to  make  a  few  general  statements  concerning  Job 
and  Ecclesiastes,  and  then  to  give  a  summary  of 
the  teaching  of  the  Book  of  Proverbs. 

There  are  three  practical  uses  of  the  Book  of 
Job  which  must  be  remembered  in  connection 
with  the  purpose  of  these  lectures,  (i)  The  Book 
is  the  supreme  instance  of  the  neglected  truth  that 
Revelation  is  not  confined  to  literal  history.  (2)  It 
is  an  illustration  of  the  uses  of  religious  doubt  and 
revolt.  And  (3)  it  is  a  fine  discipline  for  pastors 
in  the  treatment  of  hearts  racked  by  experience, 
and  by  the  inevitable  conflict  of  faith  with  the 
facts  of  life. 

(i)  The  Book  of  Job  is  anonymous.  The 
name  of  the  hero,  the  fame  of  his  piety,  and  per- 
haps also  the  nature  of  his  trials,  are  founded  on 
tradition ;  ^  but  since  Luther  the  growing  and  now 
accepted  opinion  of  Protestant  scholars  ^  is  that 
the  Book  is  not  literal  history  —  *  Job  spake  not 
in  that  sort  as  in  the  Book  is  written,  for  it  is  not 
easy  [?  possible]  in  tribulation  and  temptation 
to  speak  after  that  manner '^  —  but  is  the  ideal 

1  Ezek.  xiv.  14. 

2  See  any  good  introduction  to  the  Book  of  Job,  e.g.  Professor 
Davidson's  in  the  Cambridge  Bible  for  Schools.  The  opinion  that 
Job  was  not  an  actual  man  but  •  a  parable  '  was  held  by  early 
Jewish  scholars.  See  the  tradition  of  this  in  the  Talmud, '  Baba 
Bathra,'  15. 

8  Luther,  Table  Talk,  chap,  xxxi.,  Captain  Henrie  Bell's 
translation. 


294       MODERN   CRITICISM  AND    THE 

presentation,  by  one  of  the  greatest  poets  whom 
the  world  has  ever  known,  of  the  experience 
of  innocent  suffering,  of  the  conflict  of  its  con- 
science with  orthodox  religious  explanations,  of 
the  doubts  and  defiance  which  it  excites,  and 
of  their  only  possible  solution  in  personal  trust 
and  submission  to  God  —  *  he  had  by  himself  such 
cogitations:  it  fell  out  and  happened  so  indeed 
as  is  written.' 1  There  is  no  Book  of  the  Old 
Testament  in  which  the  '  minor  authenticities  '  ^ 
are  of  such  little  account  in  comparison  with 
the  magnificent  genuineness  of  the  experience 
which  the  Book  contains.  Is  it  silent  about 
its  author  ?  It  holds  itself  almost  equally  aloof 
from  all  questions  of  its  foundation  on  the  facts 
of  any  single  life.  It  deals  with  the  perennial 
problem  of  Israel's  faith,  the  suffering  of  the 
righteous.  It  exposes,  explodes  and  dissipates 
the  obdurate  superstition  (which  even  Christ 
had  to  combat^),  that  suffering  and  adversity 
always  mean  punishment,  and  that  such  an 
explanation  of  them  is  the  only  means  of  vin- 
dicating God's  righteousness.  If  for  this  the 
Book  provides  no  substitute  in  a  positive,  ex- 
plicit doctrine  of  suffering,  it  at  least  clears  the 
ground  for  such  a  doctrine,  as  that  appeared  even 
under  the  Old  Testament,"*  and  was  consummated 
in  the  Cross  of  Christ.     Meanwhile  it  supplies 

^  /did.  2  Compare  above,  p.  172. 

8  Luke  xiii.  2;  cf.  John  vii.     *  Isaiah  xl-lv.,  Prov.  iii.  11,  12. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   295 

in  the  most  divine,  because  the  most  gentle  and 
natural  manner,  new  inspiration  to  patience, 
loyalty  and  hope,  with  the  constant  proof  that 
suffering  endured  in  these  tempers  lifts  the  mind 
to  a  stronger  and  more  original  hold  upon  God 
Himself.  No  man  can  deny  that  this  is,  in  the 
truest  sense  of  the  word,  a  revelation,  with  its 
own  indispensable  function  in  the  preparation 
for  Christ.  And  it  is  presented  in  the  form  of  a 
drama  of  religious  experience,  which,  though  in 
revolt  against  the  orthodox  dogmas  of  the  day, 
is  yet  absolutely  fair  to  these  by  drawing  the 
characters  of  their  representatives  so  as  to  bring 
out  all  the  good  that  is  in  them  ;  and  which 
in  itself  is  wonderfully  vivid,  sincere  and  real. 
Before  such  divine  doctrine  and  true  human 
experience,  questions  about  the  *  literal '  history 
of  the  Book  are  felt  to  be  impertinences  ;  and 
we  acknowledge  the  truth  —  so  significant  for  the 
interpretation  of  other  Scriptures  ^  —  that  Reve- 
lation is  not  coincident  with  the  bare  letter  of 
actual  facts,  but  may  be  conveyed  to  us,  in  its 
highest  substance,  through  the  ideal  presentation 
of  these  by  an  inspired  artist  or  poet. 

(2)  It  has  been  a  trouble  to  some  that  pro- 
cesses and  results,  so  full  of  the  doubt  and 
contradiction  of  principles  affirmed  by  other 
Scriptures,  should  ever  have  been  regarded  as 
of  equal   divinity  with  these,  and  admitted  into 

1  See  above,  p.  74,  89,  107  f. 


296       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND    THE 

the  Canon  of  the  Jewish  or  of  the  Christian 
Church.  Let  me  only  point  out  that  no  narrow 
theories  of  inspiration  can  account  for  this  — 
men  are  able  to  hold  such  theories  only  by  ig- 
noring it  ^  —  but  to  an  open  mind  it  is  the  proof 
of  guidance  in  the  growth  and  selection  of 
the  Scriptures  by  a  Spirit  with  standards  and 
sympathies  very  much  wider  than  the  standards 
or  sympathies  of  any  single  school  of  religious 
belief.  In  the  Old  Testament  Books  of  specu- 
lative and  experimental  Wisdom  we  see  the  same 
condescendence  on  the  part  of  God  as  we  see  in 
the  rudimentary  stages  of  the  history.^  His 
Spirit  sympathises  with  His  children's  rude  and 
painful  struggles  after  light ;  with  their  discon- 
tent with  the  earlier  achievements  of  religion, 
and  with  their  revolts  against  ancient  dogmas. 
Moreover,  it  rewards  the  rebel  by  the  gift  of  new 
aspects  of  truth,  and  by  guidance  to  firmer  and 
more  original  faith  in  God.  Therefore,  so  far 
from  these  passages  of  argument  and  of  doubt, 
which  the  Scripture  contains,  being  less  evan- 
gelical than  the  prophecy  and  history,  they  also 
are  proofs  of  Grace :  the  seeking  and  the  saving 
of  them  that  have  wandered  or  are  lost.     Let  me 

1  It  is  too  little  noticed  that  the  advocates  of  a  verbal  inspira- 
tion of  Scripture  (or  of  kindred  theories)  have  to  reckon  not  only 
with  the  discrepancies  of  fact  in  the  Old  Testament,  but  with  the 
presence  in  it  of  opposite  religious  tempers  ;  and  of  the  contradic- 
tion by  some  Books  of  the  teaching  in  others. 

2  See  above,  p.  143  f. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  297 

quote  to  you  the  fine  words  of  one  who  has  done 
more  than  any  other  teacher  of  our  day  for  the 
spiritual  understanding  of  the  Book  of  Job :  — 
'  The  reveahng  Spirit  was  in  a  certain  sense  an 
indwelHng  Spirit,  uniting  Himself  intimately  with 
all  the  highest  affections  and  noblest  aspirations 
of  the  men  whose  mind  he  illuminated.  And 
these  men  were  not  persons,  who  stood  as  mere 
objective  instruments  to  be  addressed ;  they  were 
of  the  people.  Every  feeling  of  the  people,  every 
movement  of  life  at  its  lowest  stratum,  sent  its 
impulse  up  to  them ;  every  hope  or  fear  was 
reflected  in  their  heart :  and  with  all  these  move- 
ments and  reflected  emotions  .  .  .  the  Spirit  of 
Revelation,  which  was  not  a  Spirit  of  knowledge 
merely  but  of  Hfe,  sympathised  and,  if  the  word 
can  be  used,  coalesced.  The  people  of  Israel  as 
the  Church  of  God  lived  a  profound  life ;  in  its 
outstanding  men  that  life  was  at  its  profoundest 
and  broadest;  and  as  at  the  first  the  Spirit  of 
God  moved  upon  the  face  of  the  waters  that 
covered  the  earth,  so  He  moved  upon  that  un- 
quiet sea  of  the  Church's  mind,  agitated  with 
emotions,  with  presentiments,  with  fears,  with 
speculations,  and  out  of  them  all  brought  more 
perfect  forms  of  truth.'  ^ 

(3)  The  third  lesson  for  the  practical  preacher, 
which  I  have  promised  to  show  in  the  Book 
of  Job,  concerns  his  attitude  towards  religious 

1  A.  B.  Davidson. 


298       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

doubt  and  revolt  when  these  shall  draw  to 
him  for  counsel.  The  speeches  of  Job's  friends 
ought  to  be  studied  by  every  man  who  pro- 
poses to  make  the  guidance  and  consolation 
of  his  fellow-men,  in  their  religious  interests, 
the  duty  of  his  life.  For  these  speeches  are, 
every  one  of  them,  lessons  both  in  how,  and  how 
not,  to  discharge  that  delicate  and  responsible 
office.  The  writer  of  the  Book  of  Job  is  thor- 
oughly fair  to  the  traditional  views  of  which  it 
is  his  aim  to  show  the  insufficiency.  He  re- 
presents them  by  men  of  honesty,  and  even 
at  first  of  courtesy,  who  take  up  their  task 
in  the  sincere  desire  to  help  Job  out  of  all 
his  troubles.  In  particular  we  have  much 
to  learn  from  the  approach  of  Eliphaz  the 
Temanite  to  his  afflicted  friend.  But  the 
author  shows  how  all  the  three  comforters  of 
Job  misunderstand  the  heart;  how  little  they 
have  fathomed  human  experience;  how  easily 
worn  out  are  their  love  and  patience;  how 
they  prefer  to  vindicate  their  own  views  of 
God  to  saving  the  soul  of  their  brother;  and 
how  above  all  they  commit  the  sin  of  not  per- 
ceiving that  God  Himself  may  be  working 
directly  on  that  brother's  heart,  and  purposes 
to  teach  them  more  than  they  can  ever  teach 
him.  Love  was  what  he  looked  for  and  trust: 
but   they  gave  him  argument  which  for  a  time 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  299 

only  drove  him  the  further  from  God.     You  re- 
member what  he  says  : 

To  him  that  is  ready  to  faint  kijidness  is  due 

from  his  friend y 
Even  to  him  that  is  forsaking  the  fear  of  the 

Almighty} 

There  is  doubt  about  the  true  reading  ;  but 
none  can  mistake  the  meaning.  And  yet  ihow 
ignored  this  great  verse  has  been  !  How  different 
were  the  history  of  rehgion  if  men  had  kept 
it  in  mind !  How  much  sweeter  and  swifter 
would  the  progress  of  Christianity  have  proved ! 
The  physicians  of  religious  perplexity  have  too 
often  been  Job's  comforters  ;  and  the  souls  in 
doubt,  who  should  have  been  gathered  to  the 
heart  of  the  Church  with  as  much  pity  and  care  as 
the  penitent  or  the  mourner,  have  been  scorned 
or  cursed,  or  banished  or  even  put  to  death. 

But  it  must  be  evident  to  every  reader  that, 
freely  as  the  Wise  Men  speculated,  they  never 
regarded  speculation  as  an  end  in  itself,  or  even 
as  a  means  by  itself.  They  held  it  impossible 
to  separate  thinking  from  the  practice  of  life, 
and  in  a  remarkable  degree  foreshadowed  the 
statement  of  Christ:  if  any  man  zvill  do  His 
will  he  shall  know  of  the  doctrine.  Practical  life 
was  not  only  their  starting-point.  It  was  the 
return  and  refuge  of  all  their  thought.     If  they 

1  vi.  14. 


300       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

were  baffled  in  their  search  for  knowledge  that 
did  not  paralyse  their  wills.  Duty  was  plain. 
The  difference  between  right  and  wrong  was  plain. 
God  Himself  was  past  doubt  in  His  character 
of  Lawgiver  and  Judge.  Let  tis  hear  the  conclusion 
of  the  whole  matter :  fear  God  and  keep  His  com- 
mandinents,for  this  is  the  duty  of  every  man} 

But  that  brings  us  to  the  Book  in  which  the 
practical  and  didactic  Wisdom  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment is  most  fully  set  forth. 

The  Book  of  Proverbs, 

Mr.  Ruskin  tells  us  that  in  the  Bible  of  his 
boyhood  he  preserved  till  old  age  the  list  of 
chapters  which  his  mother  gave  him  to  commit 
to  memory.  *  With  this  list  thus  learned,  she 
established  my  soul  in  life.  And  truly,  though 
I  have  picked  up  the  elements  of  a  little  further 
knowledge  in  mathematics  and  meteorology  and 
the  like  in  after  life,  and  owe  not  a  little  to  the 
teaching  of  many  people,  this  maternal  installa- 
tion of  my  mind  in  that  property  of  chapters,  I 
count  very  confidently  the  most  precious  and 
on  the  whole  the  one  essential  part  of  all  my 
education.'^ 

In  the  inventory  of  a  property  so  splendidly 
appraised  we  find  four  chapters  of  the  Book 
of     Proverbs  —  the    second,   third,   eighth    and 

1  Ecclesiastes  xii.  13.  ^  Praeterita,  i.  57. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  301 

twelfth.  And  I  suppose  that  to  the  generation 
of  Ruskin's  father  and  to  his  own  generation, 
the  Book  of  Proverbs  proved  a  necessary  part 
of  a  religious  education.  That  they  are  cast  in 
the  oldest  and  most  simple  form  of  tradition  — 
for,  as  the  Easterns  say,  some  are  born  and 
some  die,  and  the  old  tell  the  young  what  they 
know;  that  they  are  addressed  from  a  serene 
age  to  youth  which  has  not  lost  its  faith  or 
its  absoluteness;  that  they  say  nothing  of  the 
intricacies  or  the  qualifications  of  middle  man- 
hood ;  that  they  echo  almost  no  accents  and  re- 
flect few  lights  of  any  particular  period  of  history; 
that  their  instances  are  drawn  from  the  essential 
human  experiences  and  their  humour  and  wit 
are  those  of  the  common  people  —  it  is  this 
which  has  given  the  Proverbs  of  Israel  their 
wide  popularity  and  caused  their  employment  in 
the  education  of  so  many  races. 

But  of  late  years  the  Book  of  Proverbs  appears 
to  have  become  neglected  in  the  education  of  the 
young.  It  may  be  that  in  the  more  spiritual 
temper  which  religion  has  assumed  in  our  time 
and  in  our  quickened,  because  better  informed, 
love  of  the  historical  and  prophetical  Scriptures  — 
the  one  with  its  romance,  the  other  with  its  lofty 
ideals  —  there  has  been  a  tendency  to  revolt 
against  the  alleged  Utilitarianism  of  the  Proverbs  ; 
just  as  there  has  been  a  revolt  against  the 
legalism  of  other  Scriptures  which  used  to  play 


302       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

a  greater  part  in  education  than  they  now  do, 
I  had  beUeved  this  feeling  to  be  more  an  instinct 
than  an  articulate  conviction,  till  the  other  day, 
when  the  leading  English  weekly  gave  to  it  a 
very  definite  expression.  The  article  I  speak  of 
described  the  temper  of  the  Book  of  Proverbs 
to  be  one  which  not  only  does  not  commend  itself 
to  the  mind  of  youth ;  but  which  it  is  our  duty 
to  keep  away  from  the  young,  as  a  prudential 
and  a  sordid  temper,  laying  stress  upon  the  con- 
sequences of  character  rather  than  upon  its 
essential  rightness  and  beauty,  enforcing  virtue 
more  because  of  the  rewards  she  can  bestow 
than  for  her  own  authority.  This  charge  may  be 
confidently  met  by  two  assertions.  In  the  first 
place  it  is  impossible  to  teach  the  folly  of  evil 
without  pointing  to  its  consequences;  and 
secondly,  the  Book  of  Proverbs  does  not  limit 
itself  to  this  primary  stage  of  morality  but,  as 
we  shall  presently  see,  enforces  Virtue  for  her 
own  sake,  paints  Wisdom  with  an  essential  worth 
and  beauty,  and  appeals  quite  as  much  to  the 
generous  affections  and  enthusiasm  of  youth  as 
to  their  prudence  and  common  sense. 

The  Book  consists  of  eight  unequal  parts  —  a 
Prologue  on  the  whole  subject  of  Wisdom:  one 
continuous  and  rhythmical  address  occupying 
the  first  nine  chapters;  then  from  Chapters  x. 
to  xxix.  four  collections,  great  and  small,  of 
proverbs   proper,   popular   sayings    lying    loose, 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  303 

for  the  most  part,  without  arrangement  as  to 
subject  or  style;  then  in  Chapter  xxx.  a  number 
of  enigmatic  or  numerical  proverbs  in  a  more 
or  less  artificial  form ;  then  the  warning  of  a 
mother  to  her  son  against  women  and  wine;  and 
finally  the  incomparable  eulogy  of  the  Virtuous 
Woman,  in  which  virtuous  is  to  be  taken  in  its 
older  and  nobler  sense  of  strength  and  bravery ; 
but  strength  and  bravery  exercised  within  the 
home. 

Now  with  regard  to  the  collections  of  Pro- 
verbs proper,  the  bulk  of  the  Book,  it  has  been 
one  great  drawback  to  their  use  that  for  the  most 
part  they  were  not  gathered  by  their  ancient 
editors  into  groups  corresponding  to  their  subjects. 
The  first  duty  of  the  reader  or  teacher  who 
would  feel  the  full  volume  of  their  wisdom,  and 
all  its  various  shrewdness,  is  to  make  such  a 
grouping  for  himself.^  Education,  Friendship, 
Marriage,  Religion  ;  God  the  Maker  of  all; 
Morality  and  Religion  as  one  ;    God's  interest  in 

1  An  admirable  arrangement  of  the  Proverbs  under  their 
proper  subjects  has  been  made  by  Professor  Foster  Kent  of  Brown 
University,  Rhode  Island  :  The  Wise  Men  of  Ancient  Israel  and 
their  Proverbs,  New  York,  etc.,  1895  (^  capital  handbook);  but 
every  teacher,  who  wishes  to  grasp  the  Book,  should  first  make 
such  an  arrangement  for  himself,  and  then  test  and  correct  it  by 
Professor  Kent's.  Besides  Professor  Toy's  (of  Harvard)  Com- 
mentary on  Proverbs  in  the  International  Critical  Commentary, 
the  teacher  or  student  will  find  useful  the  late  Rev.  W.  Arnot's 
Laws  from  Heaven  for  Life  on  Earth,  and  Dr.  Horton's  volume 
in  the  Expositor's  Bible.  See,  too.  Dr.  Davidson's  art.  'Pro- 
verbs,' in  the  Ettcyclopcedia  Britajtnica,  ninth  ed. 


304       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

the  little  things  of  conduct ;  God  as  the  searcher 
of  hearts,  and  the  rewarder  of  virtue  ;  God  and 
the  King;  God  and  the  Poor;  Equality  of  all 
men  before  God  ;  or  Sin  :  its  deceitfulness  and  its 
ruin  of  the  character,  of  the  joy  and  of  the  free- 
dom of  life;  or  such  subjects  as  the  giving  and 
taking  of  reproof,  sins  of  the  tongue;  idleness, 
anger,  poverty  and  riches,  the  value  of  substance 
in  life,  sorrow  and  comfort  —  gather  the  Proverbs 
under  these  and  other  heads,  and  for  the  first 
time  you  will  appreciate  the  resource,  the  sanity, 
the  humour,  the  occasional  brilliance,  the  frequent 
grotesqueness  of  the  popular  wisdom  of  Israel. 

If  before  I  pass  to  the  sublimer  teaching  of 
the  Prologue  I  may  select  for  illustration  one  of 
the  more  persistent  lessons  of  this  scattered 
wisdom,  I  will  choose  that  upon  the  giving 
and  taking  of  reproof.  Both  the  Prologue  and 
the  Proverbs  themselves  insist  with  a  very  em- 
phatic frequency  upon  this  difficult  and  painful 
duty.  Almost  to  weariness  they  reiterate  that  in 
education  and  morality  mere  abstract  teaching  of 
the  truth  is  not  enough ;  and  that  personal  dis- 
cipline, criticism  and  even  sore  and  humbling 
blame  are  necessary,  not  only  for  the  young  from 
the  old,  but  for  all  men  and  women  from  their 
friends  and  contemporaries.  You  will  find  the 
words  rebuke^  reproof,  discipline  and  correction  in 
every  few  verses  of  the  strenuous  and  unsparing 
doctrine  of  the  Wise. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  305 

Now  it  may  be  objected  that  criticism  so 
persistent  and  articulate  defeats  its  own  ends; 
and  that  we  live  under  the  more  powerful 
Example  of  One  who  came  not  to  judge  the 
world  but  that  the  world  through  Him  might  be 
saved.  In  the  things  to  which  Christ  cleared 
our  dim  eyes ;  in  the  wonderful  patience  of  our 
God  to  which  we  waken  every  morning ;  in  His 
fatherly  trust  of  our  foolish  and  wayward  souls ; 
in  the  sunshine,  the  fresh  air,  the  sweet  love  and 
confidence  of  our  fellow-men  His  children,  all 
that  goodness  of  God  which  by  a  thousand 
gentle  touches  leads  us  to  repentance  ;  or  again 
in  the  compassionate  holiness  of  Christ's  own  life, 
the  infinite  obligations  and  ideals  of  our  man- 
hood which  His  character  and  service  of  men 
unfold ;  or  again  in  the  holy  lives  about  us  which 
possess  themselves  silently  in  His  Patience  and 
reflect  His  Purity  and  Unselfishness  —  in  all  these 
we  feel  a  divine  judgement  of  our  souls,  beside 
which  the  criticisms  even  of  the  best  and  wisest 
of  men  sound  petty  and  irrelevant. 

Yet  on  the  other  hand  we  cannot  shut  out 
the  noisy  facts  of  the  world  we  dwell  in;  and 
while  we  refuse  to  accept  them  as  substitutes  for 
that  silent  judgement  of  the  Divine  Love,  which 
is  the  only  sufficient  rebuke  and  discipline  of  our 
souls,  we  must  see  that  we  use  them,  inevitable 
as  they  are,  for  its  instruments  and  contributories. 
We  live  in  a  world  that  will  not  spare  any  man 
u 


3o6       MODERN   CRITICISM  AND   THE 

its  criticisms.  Some  of  them  may  be  ignorant 
and  cruel  (I  will  deal  with  these  in  a  little),  but 
in  many  others  we  know  that  our  consciences 
will  not  permit  us  to  hear  anything  but  an 
honest,  and  often  a  kindly,  statement  of  what 
we  really  are  or  thoroughly  deserve. 

Our  own  age  has  been  very  hungry  for  abstract 
and  impersonal  truth  ;  but  by  an  exaggeration 
of  the  liberty  and  the  rights  of  men,  of  which  it 
is  so  proud,  there  has  never  been  an  age  more 
impatient  of  personal  criticism.  And  yet  per- 
sonal criticism,  involving  as  it  must  strokes 
painful  and  humbling,  is  absolutely  necessary 
for  us  all,  not  only  from  those  whom  we  revere, 
or  from  those  whom  we  love,  but  from  those 
whom  we  dislike,  or  whom  we  know  to  dislike 
us.  The  only  successful  teaching  of  youth  is 
that  into  which  the  element  of  personal  criticism 
bravely  enters,  and  is  loyally  accepted  by  its 
subject.  Nor  is  there  any  friendship  healthy 
which  does  not  permit  of  the  same  strenuous 
duty  among  its  obligations.  In  their  trials  and 
misfortunes,  still  more  in  their  errors  and  faults, 
men  are  constantly  tempted  to  turn  to  their 
weakest  friends  for  a  sympathy  which  is  often 
insincere  and  generally  undeserved.  Happy 
rather  is  the  man  who  is  strong  enough  and  true 
enough  to  choose  his  friends  not  for  their  agree- 
ableness  or  their  sympathy,  but  for  their  honesty 
and  severe  ideals. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  307 

Better  is  open  rebuke  than  love  that  is  masked. 
He  that  walketh  with  wise  men  shall  be  wise, 
But  the  companion   of  fools  shall  be    broken 
for  it} 

Yet  even  when  criticism  is  stupid,  irrelevant 
and  cruel,  it  is,  according  to  the  Proverbs  of 
Israel,  a  healthy  and  a  stimulating  discipline. 
Stripes  that  woimd  cleanse  away  evil,  and  strokes, 
things  without  sense  and  with  only  pain  in  them, 
the  innermost  parts  of  the  belly? 

We  all  know  how  often  a  stinging  judgement 
of  us  totally  misses  the  mark  for  which  it  was 
intended;  charging  us  with  a  fault  of  which  we 
know  we  are  innocent.  Yet  it  at  least  opens 
our  close  and  sleepy  hearts ;  it  lets  in  the 
air  ;  it  compels  us  to  examine.  We  may  resent 
unjust  criticism,  but  no  wise  man  fails  to  profit 
by  it.  Did  such  criticism  only  drive  us  to 
prayer;  did  it  only  force  us  in  self-defence  to 
carry  our  hearts  before  the  judgement  of  God: 
a  resort  to  which  we  are  not  very  prone  and 
often  require  to  be  driven:  surely  it  would  do 
us  good.  But  unjust  criticism  will  effect  more 
for  us  than  this.  Rising  as  it  often  does  from 
the  purely  conventional  standards  of  society,  or 
from  a  formal  and  pragmatical  conception  of 
religion  —  under  which  we  ourselves  may  have 
fallen  —  it  compels  us  to  question  and  explore, 
and   so   lifts  us  to  fresh  views  of  morality  and 

1  xxvii.  5;  xiii.  20.  2  xx.  30. 


3o8       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND  THE 

new  understanding  of  God.  In  this  same  litera- 
ture of  Israel's  wisdom  we  can  see  how  Job 
himself  was,  by  the  unjust  criticism  of  his  friends, 
stung  to  revolt  against  the  formulas  of  the 
popular  religion,  and  thereby  rose  to  new 
research,  with  its  end  in  larger  views  of  truth, 
and  a  more  original  hold  upon  God. 

So  much  for  the  Proverbs  of  Reproof.  A 
teacher  or  preacher  who  has  made  the  classifica- 
tion advised  above,  will  find  materials  as  sound 
and  various  under  any  of  the  other  titles 
suggested. 

But  it  is  time  now  to  turn  from  these  scattered 
couplets  to  the  great  poem  with  which  the  Book 
of  Proverbs  opens,  Chapters  i.  to  ix.  This  is 
remarkable  not  only  for  its  very  beautiful  per- 
sonification of  Wisdom,  but  for  the  fact  that  it 
contains  in  Chapter  viii.  almost  the  only  meta- 
physic  to  which  the  poetry  of  the  Wise  attained. 

And  first  I  think  you  shall  feel  from  it  how 
very  unjust  is  that  charge  of  utilitarianism  of 
which  I  spoke.  For  from  the  outset  we  learn 
that  the  Wisdom  which  the  Wise  .inculcate  is 
not  the  slow,  prudent  thrift  of  life,  gathered  by 
petty  experiences,  more  or  less  sordid  and  selfish  : 
but  is  the  reverent  and  whole-hearted  acceptance 
of  great  principles,  such  as  capture  the  heart,  stir 
us  to  enthusiasm,  and  lift  us  above  ourselves. 
In  contrast  to  the  prophets  who  won  their  truth 
by  vision,  the  wise  men  got  theirs  by  experience. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   309 

Yet  do  not  understand  by  this  that  they  would 
counsel   their   disciples   to   wait    for    their   own 
experience  —  to  gather  wisdom  merely  by  trying 
life  as  it  came  to  them.     They  would  have  them 
begin  with   wisdom  from   the  first,  get  hold  of 
her  principles,  submit  to  her  discipline,  and  then 
test  her  in  all   their  daily  fortunes  and  duties. 
We  often  hear  the  phrase :   '  Experience  teaches 
fools ' :    but    not    so   often    its   counterpart,   lAe 
strength  of  the  wise  is  their  wisdom.     Addressing 
those  who   stand   on    the   borders   of   manhood, 
wistfully  looking  forward   to  that  experience  of 
life  from  which   in  their   time  most  men   have 
foolishly  fancied  that  Wisdom   is  to  be  gained, 
the  Wise  Poet  passionately  reiterates  that  there 
is  a  Wisdom  which  comes  before  experience  and 
without  which  experience  itself  is  too  often  only 
the  belated  and  melancholy  recognition  of  wb,^^^ 
might  have  been.     To  the  young  and  t^e  simple 
he  cries :  I  have  something  to  give  which  life  by 
itself  can  never  give;   but  of  which  if  you  take 
it  now  you  .v  ill  find  ej^perience  to  be  daily  the 
stronger  proof  and  richer  reward.     The  begimting 
of  wisdom^  he  says,  is  to  get  wisdom}     Principles 
are  absolutely  necessary  for  all  who   begin   the 
work  of  life :  principles  which  we  accept,  accord- 
ing to  this   Poet,  partly  on  their  own  authority 
and   partly   upon    their  illustration  in  the   lives 
we  love  and  honour  the  most.     Before  all   ex- 
^  iv.  7. 


3IO       MODERN   CRITICISM  AND   THE 

perience  are  Conscience  and  the  Fear,  of  God ; 
obedience  to  those  who  are  wiser  and  reverence 
for  the  accumulated  wisdom  of  the  nation.  The 
Wise  Men  found  their  principles,  as  Mazzini  put 
it,  in  the  agreement  of  conscience  and  history: 
the  harmony  of  the  moral  sense  in  a  man  himself 
with  the  best  experience  of  his  race.  Hence  on 
reverence,  on  meekness,  on  the  native  instinct  for 
truth  ;  as  on  the  self-evidencing  character  of  truth 
and  its  beauty,  the  poem  insists  again  and  again. 
But  this  is  all  in  a  direction  the  very  opposite  of 
utilitarianism. 

The  pursuit  of  Wisdom  is  another  subject  of 
the  Poem  :  which  regards  it  as  a  mutual  and 
responsive  process  —  we  seeking  Wisdom,  but 
Wisdom  also  seeking  us. 

By  an  age  like  our  own,  which  has  so  much 
losc  both  the  faculty  of  attention  and  of  pro- 
longed ni^ditation  —  and  which  demands  from  its 
most  voluminous  teachers  that  its  mental  food 
shall  be  broken  up  for  it  and  given  under  headlines 
and  in  paragraphs  — by  5uch  an  age  the  instruc- 
tion of  this  Poem  may  well  be  taken  to  heart. 
I  know  no  teachers  who  lay  more  stress  upon 
the  cultivation  of  the  mental  power  of  attention : 
that  sure  and  expert  grip  of  the  mind  without 
which  both  reason  and  faith  are  impossible  and 
memory  itself  becomes  a  confused  and  inarticulate 
pain.  They  urge  them  to  lay  hold  on  wisdom y  to 
purchase  understanding,  to  hearken,  to  listen,  to 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  311 

fasten  —  so  that  thou  incline  thine  ear  nnto  wisdom 
and  apply  thine  heart  to  under standijig.  Yea  if 
thou  seek  her  as  silver  and  search  for  her  as  for 
hid  treasures  then  shall  thou  understand  the  fear  of 
Jahweh  and  find  the  knowledge  of  God}  These 
powers  of  attention  and  concentration  the  poem 
allies  with  purity  of  heart,  illustrating  the  dis- 
tractions and  dissipation  of  impure  or  covetous 
thoughts.  On  the  whole  subject  of  the  moral 
habits  and  the  intellect,  or  the  connection  between 
purity  of  heart  and  the  enthusiasm  for  hard  work, 
there  is  no  teaching  in  all  literature  more  sane 
and  more  bracing. 

But  to  such  strenuous  endeavours  the  Poem 
tells  us  there  is  a  liberal  response  from  the  very 
heart  of  the  universe.  Wisdom  is  not  conceived 
after  the  fashion  in  which  others  have  dreamt  of 
her,  as  a  slumbering  deity  difficult  to  rouse;  or  as 
a  jealous  one  awake  only  to  guard  her  secrets  from 
men  and  to  baffle  them  in  their  pursuit  of  her  — 
the  path  to  her  presence  strewn  with  the  bones 
of  those  who  have  sought  her  in  vain.  She  is 
human  and  near  and  kind  :  a  Woman  clothed 
with  beauty,  visible  to  every  eye  and  with  de- 
sire for  all  in  whom  the  love  of  her  beauty  has  , 
been  wakened  :  pitiful,  solicitous,  urgent,  liber^' 
redemptive : 

/  love  them  that  love  me 
And  they  that  seek  me  early  shal^ 
1  ii.  2-4. 


312       MODERN   CRITICISM   AND   THE 

Like  the  highest  wisdom  of  all  the  great  races, 
this  also  is  represented  as  popular.  Though  the 
fellow  of  God  and  the  artificer  of  the  Universe, 
her  home  is  in  the  habitable  parts  of  the  earth, 
and  her  dehghts  with  the  children  of  men.  Like 
Socrates  and  like  Jesus  she  is  a  street-preacher, 
a  frequenter  of  markets  and  the  assemblies  of 
civic   life  : 

Wisdom  crieth  alo2id  in  the  street. 

She  tittereth  her  voice  in  the  broad  places. 

She  crieth  in  the  chief  place  of  concourse 

At  the  e7itering  in  of  the  gates. 

In  the  city  she  uttereth  her  words} 

But  she  is  popular  and  public  only  for  a  higher 
end.     In  the  secret  of  the   Universe  beats  the 
desire  to  save  men,  and  the  Wisdom  of  God  is  at 
the  heart  of  it  redemptive  : 
Unto  you^  O  men^  I  cally 
And  tny  voice  is  to  the  sons  of  men. 
O  ye  simple,  understand  zvisdoniy 
And  ye  fools,  be  of  an  understanding  heart. 
For  wJioso  findeth  me  findeth  life, 
And  he  that  misseth  me  wrongeth  himself? 

Wisdom  descending  from  God's  right  hand  to 
plead  with  the  man  on  the  street  ;  the  final 
passion  and  glory  of  all  the  forces  and  faculties 
of  the  Universe,  to  win  the  common  and  the 
simple  from  sin !  It  is  again  the  Spirit  of  Christ 
that  we  feel. 

1  i.  20  f.  2  viii.  4  f.,  35  f. 


PREACHING  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT   313 

And  hence  we  have  those  alternative  pictures 
of  Wisdom  and  Sensuality,  whose  realism  is  so 
striking.  Why  are  both  thus  set  side  by  side,  as 
women  of  beauty  and  attraction,  urgent  enter- 
tainers of  mankind,  but  with  the  intention  that 
the  Wisdom  of  the  higher  life  shall  be  made  to 
appear  as  popular,  pervasive  and  persistent  as 
ever  the  cunning  of  the  lower  has  proved  itself 
to  be ;  that  our  hearts  shall  be  driven  to  feel  as 
hunted  and  haunted  by  temptations  to  a  life  of 
virtue  and  wisdom,  as  they  ever  were  by  the 
temptations  of  the  flesh  and  the  world  ? 

That  is  a  vision,  which  the  preacher  of  to- 
day must  heartily  welcome :  when  the  oppor- 
tunities to  vice  are  on  every  side  so  open,  so 
attractive,  in  many  cases  so  apparently  secure  ; 
when  on  the  other  hand  our  unpurged  eyes  feel 
righteousness  to  be  so  abstract  and  so  arduous. 
The  vision  of  Wisdom  would  show  us  that  this 
is  not  true.  Righteousness  is  not  abstract  nor 
unreal  ;  not  hard  to  find  in  the  crowd  about  us, 
nor  in  her  beginnings  beyond  the  reach  of  any, 
however  thronged  or  trampled  by  the  world. 
Everywhere  her  gates  are  open,  her  presence 
manifest,  her  joys  obvious  and  soHd.  She  dwells 
with  men.  There  is  not  an  arena  on  which  we  are 
called  to  live,  but  is  brilliant  with  the  incarnate 
examples  of  righteousness  and  purity.  She 
dwells  with  God,  and  was  with  Him  when  the 
world  was  made.     The  forces  of  the  Universe  are 


314  MODERN   CRITICISM 

on  the  side  of  the  will  that  chooses  virtue :  and 
to  the  ignorant  and  the  wandered,  if  they  have 
but  one  spark  of  desire  for  what  is  pure  and 
honest  and  lovely,  the  heart  of  God  Himself 
comes  forth  with  the  desire  to  teach,  to  lift, 
to   restore. 

This  is  the  Spirit  of  Christ  in  Hebrew  Wisdom, 
and  with  it  we  may  suitably  close  our  study  of 
Wisdom's  Books. 


INDEX 


Abarim,  69  n. 

Addis.  Documents  of  the  Hexa- 
teuch^  33,  40,  52  «.,  105  n., 
106  n. 

Alexandria,  School  of,  226,  231. 

Allegorising  interpretation  of  the 
Old  Testament  by  the  Christian 
Church,  Lecture  Yii.  passim. 

Ambrose,  231. 

America,  criticism  of  the  Hexa- 
teuch,  40;  Semitic  scholarship 
in  the  seventeenth  and  eigh- 
teenth centuries,  250. 

Anthropomorphisms  in  the  Old 
Testament,  175. 

Antioch,  School  of,  227,  231. 

Apostolic  Cojistitutions,  224  n. 

Aquinas,  Thomas,  235. 

Arabs,  pre-Mohammedan  litera- 
ture of,  116,  125. 

Archaeology  and  modern  criticism, 
31,  56  ff. ;  archaeology  and  the 
Pentateuch,  58,  90  ff.,  99  ff. ; 
and  the  Prophets,  65,  217  f. 

Arnold,  Matthew,  149. 

Arnot,  William,  75;  Laws  from 
Heaven  for  Life  on  Earth,  221 
«.,  303  n. 

Assizes  of  Jerusalem,  253  n. 

Astruc,  Conjectures,  etc.,  34,  248  n. 

Augustine,  6,  231  ff. ;  works  of, 
232  «.,  233  n. ;  De  Civitate  Dei^ 
252  f. 


Authority  and  Archceology,  61  «., 
67. 

Baalim,  worship  of,  119  f. 

Babel,  Tower  of,  91. 

Babylonia,  discoveries  in,  90 ;  lit- 
erature, 91;  monuments,  116, 
1 18 ;  tablets,  60. 

Babyl.  Expedition  of  the  Univ.  cf 
Pentisylvania,  91  n. 

Bacon,  Professor,  40. 

Ball,  40. 

Baumgartner,  Professor,  240  n. 

Beecher,  Henry  Ward,  75. 

Beersheba,  105. 

Begg,  Dr.  James,  221  n. 

Bell,  Capt.  Henrie,  257  n.,  293  n. 

Bennett,  Prof.,  40,  49  n. 

Bernard  of  Clairvaux,  235. 

Bethel,  47, 105 ;  origin  of  name,  38- 

Bethpeor,  70  n. 

Beugnot,  Le  Comte,  253  n. 

Beza,  240  n. 

Bible  Dictionary,  Hastings',  37  «., 
40,  42,  55,  64  n.,  103  n.,  107, 
III,  161  «.,  174  n.,  184  n.,  185, 
etc. 

Blaikie,  Dr.  W.  G.,  221  n. 

Bleek,  37. 

Bochart,  Samuel,  249  n. 

Book  of  the  Tivelve  Prophets  (Ex- 
positor's Bible),  85,  88  f.,  103 
n.,  159  «. 


3i6 


INDEX 


Boston,  Thomas,  250. 

Briggs,  Professor,  40. 

Bright,  John,  218  «. 

British  Museum,  Guide  to  the 
Babylonian  and  Assyrian  Col- 
lections, 61   n.,  90  f.  n. 

Brown,  Professor  Francis,  55. 

of  Wamphray,  250. 

Brugsch,  64. 

Buchanan,  George,  252,  260  f. 

Budde,  Professor,  7  «.,  40,  114 
n.,  115  «.,  132  «.,  T38  n.,  151 
«.,  161  n. ;  Biblische  Urgeschichte, 
en  n. 

Butler,  Bishop,  75. 

Buxtorf,  248  ;/. 

Calvin,  6;  as  exegete,  146; 
240  ff. ;  political  use  of  Old 
Testament,  252,  258  ff. 

Candlish,  Dr.  Robert,  75. 

Canon  of  the  New  Testament,  5  ff. 

of   the    Old   Testament,  the 

history  of  its  formation,  7  ff . ;  in 
Christ's  day,  10;  the  testimony 
of  the  Apostles,  16  f. 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  267  ;  CromwelVs 
Letters  and  Speeches,  244  «. 

Chalmers,  Thomas,  221. 

Charles,  Prof.,  Critical  History  of 
the  Doctrine  of  the  Future  Life, 
184  ;/.     See  also  Preface. 

Chedorlaomer,  62  «.,  100. 

Cheyne,  Canon,  40,  80  n. ; 
Founders  of  Old  Testament 
Criticism,  33  ;/. ;  Origin  of 
the  Psalter,  87  n.,  88  n,\  Jn- 
troductioti  to  the  Book  of  Isaiah, 
161  n. 

Christianity,  Semitic  source  of, 
117. 

Chronicles,  Books  of,  their  char- 
acter, 55  f. 


Chronology,  Babylonian,  90  f.  n.) 

Biblical,  66,  90  f . 
Chrysostom,  227  ff. 
Clement    of    Rome,   Ep.    to    the 

Corinthians,  226  n. 
Coccejus,  245  n. 
Colenso,  Bishop,  76. 
Collins,  248  ;/. 
Cornill,  Der  Israelitische  Prophet- 

ismus^  107  n.,  222  n. 
Council  of  Carthage,  5. 
Councils  of  the  Church,  5,  8. 
Covenant,   the    Idea   of,    137   ff., 

245  ff. 
Creation,  dates  of,  90, 
Cunaus,  249  71. 
Cyprian,  224  n. 

Dante,  Be  Monarchia,  236  n., 
252,  254. 

David,  his  history,  78  ff. ;  and  the 
Psalms,  86  ff. ;  his  character, 
155  ff. ;  his  Dirge  upon  Saul, 
155  ff.,  182  f.     See  also  256. 

Davidson,  Professor  A.  B.,  1 1 1  ;/., 
114  n.,  184  n.,  185  n.,  220, 
268  n.,  286,  291  n.,  293  n., 
297  n.,  303  n. 

Deborah,  Song  of,  142  ff. 

De  Dieu,  248  n. 

Delitzsch,  40. 

De  Montfaucon,  229  n.,  230  n. 

Denney,  Professor,  14. 

Deuteronomists,  the,  37,  42  n. ; 
their  view  of  the  conquest  of 
Palestine,  47  f.  ;  their  date, 
50  f.,  58  ff. ,  69  f. ;  their 
references  to  death,  180  ;/.  7. 

Deuteronomy,  7  ;  its  use  by  our 
Lord,  II,  163;  its  place  in  the 
evangelical  preparation,  162  f.; 
its  religion  purely  national,  ib. ; 
its   civic  teaching,   273  f.  ;   its 


INDEX 


317 


influence  on  the  Books  of 
Wisdom,  287. 

De  Wette,  2,1- 

Dickson  (on  the  Psalms),  250  7t, 

Didron,  256  n. 

Diestel,  Geschichte  des  Alien  Tes- 
tanientes  in  der  Christlichen 
Kirche,  224  «.,  225  n.,  229  «., 
231  «.,  235,  240,  243,  253  ;/. 

Dillmann,  40,  180  n, 

Diodorus  of  Tarsus,  227. 

Dods,  Marcus,  Genesis  (Exposi- 
tor's Bible),  97  71. 

'  Doublets  '  in  the  Old  Testament 
histories,  33,  35,  38,  44,  47  ^; 
78. 

Doubt  and  speculation  in  the  Old 
Testament,  283,  295  f. 

Doughty,  Arabia  Deserta,  184  «., 
192  n.,  193  n. 

Driver,  Canon,  37  «.,  40,  43  n., 
51  n.,  52  «.,  62  n.,  64  «.,  67, 
87  «.,  91  n.,  100  «.,  103  n.,  107  «., 
161  «.,  180  n. 

Drummond,  Prof.  Henry,  27  f. 

Duhm,  Professor,  161  «. 

Ebers,  64. 

Edom,  103. 

Edwards,  Jonathan,  251  n. 

Egyptian  discoveries,  61  £f.,  90  f., 

100. 
Eichhorn,  35. 
Eisenmenger,  249  n. 
Elohist  Writers,  the,  35,  38.     See 

under  Jahwist. 
Encyclopa:dia  Biblica,  7  «.,  17,  37, 

40,  55  «.,  62  «.,  69  «.,  etc. 
Eiicyclopcedia   Britaimica,   286  «., 

303  «• 
Epic  of  Ishtar,  196  n. 
Erpenius,  248  n. 
Estlin  Carpenter,  40. 


Euphrates,  69,  99. 

Eusebius,  6  n. 

Ewald,  37,  220. 

Expositor,  115  n.,  242  n.,  268  n. 

Farrar,  Dean,  220,  220  n. 

Federal  Theology,  245  ff. 

Filmer,  Sir  Robert,  Pairiarcha, 
262. 

Findlay,  Professor,  Expositor's 
Greek  Testament,  19  n. 

Foster,  John,  75. 

'  Fragmentary  Hypothesis,'  36. 

Free  Church  of  Scotland  (General 
Assembly  of  1881),  221. 

Frey,  184  ;/. 

Future  Life,  attitude  of  Old  Tes- 
tament writers  to,  Lecture  v., 
Sections  i.  and  ii.  The  uses 
of  their  doctrine,  to  our  own 
day.  Section  III. 


Geddes,  Father,  36  f. 

Gibbon,  Decline  and  Fall,  225  n. 

Gilgal,  105. 

Gladstone,  W.  E.,  218  n. 

Goldwin  Smith,  Professor,  25. 

Golius,  248  n. 

Goodwin  {JSfoses  and  Aaron),  249 

n. 

,  Puritan  preacher,  244. 

Goshen,  too. 

Graf,  40,  46  n. 

Gray,  G.  B.,  52  n. 

Gregory,  6. 

Grotius,  248  n. 

Guide  to   the  Bab.    and  Assyrian 

Room  (British  Museum),  61  «., 

91  n. 
Gunkel,    Schopfimg    und    Chaos, 

61  n. 
Guthrie,  Dr.,  221  n. 


3i< 


INDEX 


Hackmann,     Zuku7iftserivartu7ig 
des  Jesaia,  i6i  n. 

Harford-Battersby,  40. 

Harran,  position  of,  99  71. 

Hasselquist,  249  n. 

Haupt,  Sacred  Books  of  the   Old 
Testametit,  42,  49  «.,  51  n.,  78  n. 

Hebrew  FroJ^er  NameSy  52  n. 

Heine,  245  n. 

Henry,  Mattiiew,  147,  156. 

Herzog,  Real-Encyclopddie^  240  ti. 

Hexateuch,  composition  of,  chaps. 
II.  and  III. 

High  Priest,  the,  172  ff. 

Hilary  of  Poitiers,  231  n. 

Hilprecht,  91  n. 

Histoire  du  Peuple  d' Israel,  118  «. 

Histoire      Ghierale     des     Langucs 
Semitiques  (Renan),  118  //. 

Historical  Review,  105  «. 

Historical   Geography  of  the  Holy 
Land,  68,  152,  224  n. 

Historical  Books  of   Old   Testa- 
ment, composition  of,  43  f. 

Hitzig,  69  n. 

Hobbes,  248  n. 

Holzinger,  40. 

Hommel,  Professor,  46,  58. 

Hooker,  262. 

Horeb,  70  n. 

Horton,  Dr.,  203  n. 

Hugo  St.  Victor,  172. 

Hupfeld,  Sojirces  of  Genesis,  38. 

Hutchison  (on  Minor  Prophets), 
250  n. 

Ilgen,  35. 

Immortality,  the  Hope  of,  in  the 

Old    Testament,     Lecture    v.  ; 

the    belief  in,   to-day,  209  ff. ; 

'corporate  immortality,'  212  ff. 
Incarnation,    true    prophecy    of, 

174  f. 


Inquisition,  24,  253. 

Islam,  Semitic  source  of,  116. 

Israel.  For  a  sketch  of  the  early 
history  of  the  religion:  its 
Semitic  origins,  its  contrast 
with  other  Semitic  religions, 
its  ethical  miiqueness,  and  the 
factors  of  this,  see  Lecture  iv. 
For  the  development  of  the 
Ideas  of  Grace,  Service,  Sacri- 
fice, see  Lecture  v. ;  national 
character,  102  f. 

J  AH  WIST  and  Elohist  Writers, 
the,  34,  39 ;  their  view  of  the 
conquest  of  Palestine,  48  ;  their 
date,  50  f.,  58  f.,  62  f.,  69  f., 
105  ;  their  references  to  death 
and  Sheol,  180  n.  7. 

James  i.,  252,  262. 

Jamieson,  250. 

Jamnia,  Synod  of,  8. 

Jastrow,  Religion  of  Babylonia, 
195  n. 

Jeremias,  Die  Bab.  Assyr.  vom 
Lehen  nach  dem   Tode,  194  ff. 

Jerome,  234. 

Job,  the  Book  of.  Lecture  viii. ; 
its  attitude  to  a  future  life,  193, 
207. 

Joshua,  composition  of  Book  of, 

47. 
Judaism,  Semitic  source  of,  116. 

Kautzsch,  40,  78  n. 
Kent,  Professor  Foster,  303  n. 
Ker,  Dr.  John,  279. 
Kingsley,  Charles,  75,  219. 
Kirkpatrick,  Professor,  161  n. 
Knox,  252,  260  f. 
Kostlin,  239. 

Kuenen,  40,  136,  151 ;  Gesammelte 
Abhdndlungen,  I15  «• 


INDEX 


319 


Lamech,  Song  of,  96  f. 

Le  Bas  and  Waddington,  224  n. 

Licinius  Rufinus,  Lex  Dei,  225  71. 

Lightfoot,  249  n. 

Lindsay,  Prof.  T.  M.,  242  n. 

Livingstone,  John,  250. 

Locke,  John,  262. 

Luther,  6,  237,  243;  Table 
Talk,  237  n. ;  political  use  of 
Old  Testament,  252,  257  f., 
293  n. 

Mackintosh,      Robert,       Christ 

afid  the  Jewish  Lata,  14  n. 
Mai,     A.,     Nova     Fatro.     Bibl., 

228  n. 
Marti,  Geschichte  der  Israel.     Re 

ligion,  161  71. 
Mather,  Cotton,  251  n. 
Maundrell,  249  jt. 
Maurice,  F.  D.,  75,  219,  264. 
Mazzini,  267,  303. 
Meier,  E.,  151  n. 
Melanchthon,  237. 
Merenptah,  100  «. 
Messiah,  the,  159  ff.,  174  f. 
Messianic  Prophecy,  146  f. 
Migne,  Patrologia  GrcBca,  228  n. 
Milton,  252,  262. 
Mitchell,  Prof.,  42  n. 
Mizpeh,  105. 
Moab,  70  n. 

Mohammed  (on  resurrection),  192. 
Monotheism  among  the  Semites, 

117  ff.;  rise  of,  131  ff.,  143. 
Moody,  D.  L.,  217  «. 
Moore,     Professor    G.,     t;],    40 ; 

on   American    Old    Testament 

Scholarship  in  Zeitschrift  fiir  A. 

T.  Wissenschaft,  250  n.,  251. 
Moreh,  terebinth  of,  105. 
Muller,      W.      M.,      Asieti      und 

Europa,  100  n. 


Nebo,  70  n. 

Nehemiah,  7. 

New     England's     First     Fruits, 

250  «. 
Newman,    John     Henry,    75 ;     a 

letter  on  punishment  of  heretics, 

24. 
Nikolaus  of  Lyra,  236  n. 
Noldeke,  40. 


Old  Testament  Criticism,  history 

of,  ZZ  ff- 
Oriental    Congress    (Paris    1897), 

61. 
Origen,  226  £f.,  231,  237  n. 

Patriarchal  narratives:  archaeo- 
logical evidence,  99  ff. 

Pentateuch,  composition  of,  -t^t^ 
ff. ;  date  of  its  constituent  docu- 
ments, 50  ff. ;  and  archseology, 
58  ff.,  68  ff. ;  historical  basis 
in,  90  ff. ;  attitude  to  a  future 
life,  178  ff. ;  Luther  on  its 
authorship,  238. 

Persecutions  by  the  Church,  23  f. 

Pilgrim  Fathers,  scholarship  of, 
250. 

Pisgah,  70  71. 

Pococke,  249  n. 

Poetical  Books  of  Old  Testament, 
composition  of,  44. 

Polytheism  among  the  Semites, 
119  ff.;  in  Israel,  129  ;/. 

Priestly  Writers,  the,  39;  their 
view  of  the  conquest  of  Pales- 
tine, 47  f. ;  their  date,  50  ff., 
58  ff.,  69  f . ;  their  references  to 
death,  180  n.  7. 

Prophetical  Books  of  Old  Testa- 
ment, composition  of,  44 ;  effects 
of  modern   criticism  upon,  45, 


320 


INDEX 


53;  archaeology  and  criticism, 
65,  217  ff. 

Prophets,  the,  their  preaching  to 
their  own  times,  with  its  influ- 
ence on  the  social  ethics  of 
Christendom,  Lecture  viii. 

,     their     testimony     to 

Israel's  earlier  history,  137, 
265  ff, ;  the  Spirit  of  Christ  in 
them,  158  ff. ;  their  attitude 
to  a  future  life,  185  f.,  197  ff., 
202  ff. ;  their  revival  in  the 
modern  pulpit,  218  ff. ;  their 
ministry  defined  by  Chrysostom, 
230;  neglected  by  the  Medi- 
aeval Church,  235  f. ;  the  Re- 
formers' use  of  them,  237  ff. ; 
the  use  of  them  in  the  seven- 
teenth and  eighteenth  centuries, 
244  ff . ;  their  influence  on  the 
political  ideals  of  Christendom, 
252  ff. ;  contrasted  with  the 
Apostles,  263  f. ;  their  double 
patriotism,  265  ff . ;  four  features 
of  their  civic  teaching,  272  f . ; 
their  attitude  to  miracles,  274 
ff. ;  their  predictions,  277  ;  their 
style,  279,  and  inspiration,  281 ; 
their  influence  on  the  Wise 
Men,  2S5,  287;  contrasted  with 
the  Wise  Men,  288  ff. 

Psalms^  their  titles,  dates  and 
historic  circumstance,  86  f. ; 
their  attitude  to  a  future  life, 
186  ff.,  199  ff.,  204  ff. ;  Macca- 
bean  Psalms,  9. 

Records  of  the  Past,  61  n.,  194. 
Reland,  249  n. 
Kenan,  105  n.,  118,  120,  149. 
Reproof    and   criticism,    its   uses 

according  to  Proverbs,  304  ff . 
Reuchlin,  236  n. 


Reuss,  6. 

Revelation,  its  meaning,  iii  f. ; 
A.  B.  Davidson  on,  11 1  n., 
297  ;  not  coincident  with  history, 
74,  89,  92,  108  f.,  293  ff.;  its 
conditions,  140,  143  f.  See  also 
Preface. 

in     the     Old     Testament; 

Its  proof.  Lecture  iv. ;  the  Old 
Testament  teaching  about  it, 
III  ff. ;  the  only  explanation  of 
the  ethical  uniqueness  of  Israel's 
religion,  126  f;  assured  by 
modern  criticism,  115  ff. ;  con- 
sistent with  the  tribal  character 
of  early  Israel's  God,  143  f. 
See  also  Lecture  i. :  2,  11,  15, 
19. 

Robertson,  Professor  James, 
Poetry  and  Religion  of  the 
Psahns,  87  n. 

of  Brighton,  75. 

Ruskin,  John,  Pt-cetei-ita,  300. 

Rutherford,  Samuel,  252,  260, 
262. 

Ryle,  Professor,  37  n.,  40;  Canon 
of  the  Old  Testament,  7  n. ; 
Early  Narratives  of  Genesis, 
97  n. 

Sacrifice,  Old  Testament  doc- 
trine of,  169  ff. ;  Levitical 
sacrifices,  170;  their  relation 
to  Christ,  171  f.  See  also 
under  Vicarious. 

Sacrifices  to  the  dead,  183  ff. 

,  places  of,  in  the  eighth  cen- 
tury, 105. 

Salmasius,  252,  262. 

Savonarola,  236. 

Sayce,  Professor,  46,  58  f.,  64  f. 

Scaliger,  249  n. 

Scheil,  Father,  61. 


INDEX 


321 


Schleiermacher,  279. 

Schultens,  249  «. 

Schultz,  Old  Testament  Theology, 
170  n. 

Schwally,  Leben  nach  dem  Tode, 
184  n. 

Selden,  249  11. 

Semitic  Race,  the,  their  religious 
qualities,  116  f . ;  Kenan's  as- 
sertion that  they  are  naturally 
monotheists,  118;  their  poly- 
theism, 118  f. ;  the  opportunity 
for  monotheism  in  their  religion, 

121  f. ;   influences   aiding   this, 

122  ff . ;  Israel's  exceptional 
monotheism,  126 ;  Israel's 
Semitic  character,  127  ff. ;  their 
attitude  to  a  future  life,  192  ff. ; 
its  reasons,  193  f, ;  their  de- 
mand for  physical  signs  in 
attestation  of  moral  truth,  274  f. 

Scholarship  in  the  eighteenth 

century,  248  ff. 

'  Septuagint,'  17  f. 

Shaftesbury,  Lord,  218  «.,  273  n. 

Sheol,  177;  in  the  Pentateuch, 
179  f. ;  in  the  historical  Books, 
183;  in  Babylonian  literature, 
194  f. ;  in  the  Psalms,  199  ff. 

Sieffert,  147  «.,  228  n. 

'  Signs  and  wonders,'  274  ff. 

Simon  (the  critic  of  the  Penta- 
teuch), 33,  240  n.,  248  7z. 

Sinai,  70  n. 

Skinner,  Professor,  161  n. 

Smith,  Henry,  244. 

,  Professor  H.  P.,  78  n. 

,     W.     Robertson,     40 ;     on 

Renan,  105  n.;  Old  Testament 
and  the  /elvish  Church,  55  «., 
56  n.,  87  «.,  88  «.,  112  «.,  115 
«. ;  Religion  of  the  Semites,  121, 
124,  184  n.\  Prophets  of  Israel, 


221 ;  articles  in  Encyclopedia 
Britannica,  221 ;  his  trial  and 
its  results,  221. 

Social  ethics  of  Christendom  as 
affected  by  the  Prophets, 
Lecture  vii. 

Teaching  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, Lecture  vii.  passim ; 
with  Jeremiah,  166;  in  Proverbs, 
302  ff. 

Spencer,  J.,  249  n. 

Spinoza,  248  n. 

Spirit,  the  Old  Testament  doctrine 
of  the  Divine,  iii  ff.,  255  f. 

of  Christ  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, Lecture  v. 

Spurgeon,  75. 

St.  Paul  on  the  Old  Testament, 
15  ff. 

Stade,  40;  Geschichte  des  Volkes 
Isr.,  184  n. 

Stanley,  Dean,  Lectures  on  the 
Jewish  Church,  219. 

Stark,  42  n. 

Steindorff,  64,  lOO  «. 

Sterne,  74,  75. 

Steuernagel,  42  n. 

Suffering  and  effort  imputed  to 
God,  174  f. 

Sufferings  of  the  Righteous.  See 
'  Vicarious  suffering.' 

Tell-el-Amarna  letters,  58. 

Teraphim,  183  f. 

Textual  Criticism  of  the  Old 
Testament :  its  problems  in- 
creased by  Old  Testament 
quotations  in  New  Testament, 
17,  21  f.,  29. 

Theodore  of  Mopsuestia,  147  «., 
217  n.\  his  critical  theories, 
227  f. 

Theodoret  of  Kyros,  his  works  on 


322 


INDEX 


the  Old  Testament,  and  critical 

theories,  229. 
Tholuck,  240  n. 
Tillemont,  229  n. 
Toy,  Professor,  on  Proverbs,  287, 

303  «• 
Tubingen  School  of  critics,  46. 
Typology,  145  ff. 

Ur  of  the  Chaldees,  position  of, 

99. 
Ussher,  249  n. 

Valeton,  J.  J.  P.,  Amos  en 
Hosea,  222  n. 

Vater,  2^. 

Vatke,  46  n. 

Vicarious  suffering  in  the  Old 
Testament:  with  Jeremiah,  167  ; 
Isaiah  lii.-liii.,  167  ff.  ;  the 
truth  of  it,  the  fruit  of  ex- 
perience, 168  f . ;  the  Suffering 
Servant  of  Jahweh  and  Christ, 
171. 

Volz,  Paul,  Vorexil  -  Prophetie 
und  der  Messias ,  161  n. 


Walker,    Dr.    James,    Theology 

and    Theologians    of    Scotland, 

246  f. 
Warburton,    Divine    Legation    of 

Moses,  191. 
Wellhausen,    40,    49     n.  ;     Reste 

arab.     Heidentumes,    125,     192, 

275- 

Westphal,  40. 

Wildeboer,  285. 

Winter,  151  n. 

Wisdom,  the  Hebrew,  and  the 
Christian  Preacher,  Lecture 
VIII. ;  the  figure  of  Wisdom  in 
Proverbs  and  her  character, 
308  ff. 

,    Books    of,    283    ff, ;    their 

practical  uses,  293  ff. 

Wise  Men,  the,  their  history  in 
Israel,  284  ff. ;  what  they  owed 
to  the  Prophets,  287  f. ;  con- 
trasted with  the  Prophets,  289  ff. 

Woods,  F.  H.,  40. 

ZiMMERN,  61  n. 

Zwingli,  6,  238. 


INDEX    OF    SCRIPTURE    REFERENCES' 


Genesis,  Book  of,  lo,  90  ff. 

Gen.  i.-iii.  23',  i-xi.  97  «. ;  ii.  14, 

6gn.;  iii.  129;?.;  iii.  19,  180  «.; 

iv.  10  «.,  95  n. ;  V.  23,  24,  180  n. ; 

vi.  ff.,  33,  95  «•;  vi.  6,  172  n. ; 

xi.  95  «.;   xiv.  61   f.,    100;  XV. 

I   ff,,   179   «.,   180   n.  ;    XV.    18, 

69  «.;  XV.  4,  6,  15   «. ;   xvii.   5, 

15  n.;   xxiii.   180  n.  ;    xxiii.  8, 

179  n.;   xxiv.    10,    99;    xxv.    7, 

17,  180  «.,  181  n.  ;  xxviii.  10- 
22,  38;  xxxi.  13,  38;  xxxi.  21, 
69  «.  ;  xxxi.  30,  183  7t.  ;  xxxii. 
23-33,  38;  XXXV.  9-15,  38; 
XXXV.    19,    180    n.  ;    xxxv.    29, 

180  «.,  181  n.  ;  xxxvii.  105  «. ; 
xxxvii.  35,  180  «.,  183  n.  ; 
xxxviii.  104  «. ;  xxxix.  9,  134; 
xlii.   38,    180  «.,   183  «.;    xliii. 

18,  134 ;  xliv.  31,  180  n. ;  xlviii. 
21,  179  «.,  180  «. ;  xlix.  105, 
179  «•,  180  «.,  181  «.  ;  1.  12, 
13,  181  «.  ;  1.  24,  180  «.  ; 
1.  24-26,  180  «. ;  li.  180  n. 

Exod.  xx.-xxii.    50  n.  ;  xxi.   2-6, 

184  ;/. ;  xxiii.  31,  69  «.  ;  xxv.- 
xxxi.  50  n.  ;  xxxiii.  1 1,  180  n.  ; 
xxxiu.  19,  15  «.  ;  xxxiv.  6,  151 ; 
xxxiv.  14-26,  50  n. 

Lev.  50  n.  ;  x.  2,  181  «.  ;  xx.  27, 

185  n.  ;  xxi.  5,  184  n. 

Num.    i.-xix.   50  n.  ;  xx.   22   ff., 

181  n.  ;  XX.   24,    181   «.  ;    xxi. 


13-20,   70  «. ;    xxi.    20,   70  «.; 

xxii.  5,  69  n.;  xxiii.  14,  70  n.; 

xxiii.    21,  248;    xxxiii.    44-49, 

70  n. 
Deuteronomy  7, 10,  Lect.  11.;  163, 

273- 
Deut.    i.    7,  69    «.;    iii.    17,  27, 

70   «.;    iii.  23,   180  n.;  iii.    29, 

70  «. ;  iv.   17,    129  «.,    164  «. ; 

iv.    22,    180  «. ;    iv.    34,    154; 

iv.    46,    70   n. ;    iv.    49,   70  ;/, ; 

vi.  13,  16,  163  «.;  viii.  3,  163;/.; 

X.  20,    163   n.;    xi.    24,   69    n.; 

xii.-xxvi.,  50  ft. ;  xiv.,    184  n. ; 

xxv.  4,  19  n. ;  xxvi.  14,  184  «. ; 

xxxi.  14,  16,  180  n.;  xxxii.  48, 

181     «.  ;      xxxii.     50,     181     «.  ; 

xxxii.    52,    180  «.;  xxxiii.,  105; 

xxxiii.  2,  70  «.;  xxxiv.,  i8r  «.; 

xxxiv.    I,    70  «. ;    xxxiv.  4,   5, 

180  n. ;  xxxiv.  6,  70  «. 
Joshua,  Book  of,  7  «.,  37. 
Josh.  i.  4,  69  «. ;  iii.,  iv.,  vi.,  viii.> 

48 ;  xii.  3,  70  n. ;  xiii.  20,  70  n. ; 

xxiv.  2,  69  «. ;  xxiv.  29  f.,  180  «. 
Judges,  Book  of,  7  n. 
Judg.    v.    15*^18,    153,    154;    V. 

31a,    151  ;    vi.-ix.,    77   n.  ;    vi. 

II,    151  ;    ix.,   77   n.  ;    xvii.    5, 

183  n.;  xix.-xxi.,   77   n.;  xviii., 
77  «. ;  xviii.  14,  183  n. 
Ruth,  7  n. 
Samuel,  Books  of,  7  ft.,  44 


,24     INDEX   OF   SCRIPTURE   REFERENCES 


I  Sam.  XXV.  29,  183  n.;  xxvi.  19, 
128  n.;  xxviii.  3,  9,  185  «. ; 
xxviii.  7  ff.,  181  «. ;  xxviii.  7, 
185  «. ;  xxviii.  13,  16,  184  «. 
2  Sam.  V.  23,  129  «.;  viii.  3, 
69  «.;  X.  16,  69  «.;  xii.  23, 
183  n. 

Kings,  Books  of,  7  n.,  43. 

1  Kings  ii.   2-9,  80;  iv.   21,   24, 

69  «. ;  xvii.-xix.,  81;  xvii.  17, 
182   ;/. ;   xviii.  27,   84   n. ;    xix., 

70  «.,  83  ;« ;  xxi.,  81  ;  xxii., 
135;  xxiii.  29;  xxiv.  7,  69  «. 
2  Kings  i.  ii.,  82;  ii.  ii,  181  n. ; 
iv.  32  ff.,  182  n. ;  xiii.  14,  84  n. 

Chronicles,  Books  of,  7  w.,  55. 

2  Chron.  xxiv.  21,  10  «. 
Ezra,  Book  of,  7  «.,  10. 
Nehemiah,  Book  of,  7  «.,  10. 
Esther,  7  «.,  10. 

Job,  Book  of,  7  ;^.,  133,  ch.  viii. 
Job   iii.    17-19,    196;  xvii.    12-16, 

196;   xix.   23,  193;   xix.  25  ff., 

189 ;  xix.  25-27,  207. 
Psalms,  Book  of,  7  n.,  86  ff. 
Ps.  vi.  5,  188  «. ;  xvi.  8-1 1,  205; 

xviii.     29,     33,     34,     35,    155  ; 

xix.   Ill;    XXX.   9,    188 ;    xxxix. 

12,    188;    xxxix.    12,     13,    200; 

Ii.,  88  f.  ;  Ii.  4,    15   u. ;  Ixxiii., 

187;  Ixxiii.,  205  f. ;  Ixxxviii.  11, 

188  ;    xc,    189,    200    ff.,    214  ; 

xciv.,  5  ff .,  Ill ;  cxv.  17,  188. 
Proverbs,   Book  of,   7   n.;   Lect. 

VIII. 

Prov.   iii.    11,    12,    294   n.;    viii., 

133- 
Ecclesiastes,    Book  of,  7   «.,    10; 

Lect.  VIII. 
Canticles,  7  n.,  10. 
Isaiah,  7  n. ;  i.  18,  162  n. ;  v.  i  ff., 

162  n.,    266;  vii.    276;  vii.    14, 

160   n. ;   vii.   20,   69   «. ;   ix.   7, 


162  n.;  xi.  1-5,  160  n.,  161  n.  ; 
vi.   I    ff.,   162  u.  ;    viii.   19,  20, 

185  n.,  270  ;  ix.  6  f.,  160  ;/., 
161  n.  ;  xiv.  32,  162  ;/.  ;  xix. 
112;    xxiii.    112;    xxiv.-xxvii. 

186  «.  ;  XXV.  8,  18  n.  ;  xxviii. 
278;  xxviii.  287;  xxviii.  6,  23- 
29,  112  ;  xxix.  4,  185  7t. ;  xxxiii. 
21,  22,  174  n.  ;  xxxvi.,  162  n.  ; 
xxxvii.,  162  n.  ;  xxxviii.  18, 
200  ;  xl.-xlviii.,  53  f.  ;  xl.-lv.^ 
294  ;/.  ;  xl.-lxvi.,  175  n.  ;  xl. 
25  ff.,  Ill  ;  xlii.  13-17,  175  n.  ; 
xl.  13,  15  w.  ;  xlii.  6,  268  ; 
xlii.  19,  169  n.  ;  Ixiii.  1-7, 
175  ti.  ;  xlv.  9,  10,  15  n.  ;  Hi. 
13,  169 «.;  Iv.  II,  277;  Ivii. 
15,  203  ;  Iviii.  272  ;  Ixiii.  16, 
89;/. 

Jeremiah,  7  n.  ;  i.  5,  166  n.  ;  ii., 
266 ;  ii.  18,  69  n.  ;  vii.  22, 
164  n.  ;  viii.  8,   284  «.  ;   ix.  2, 

166  n.  ;  ix.  22,  284  n.  ;  xii,  1-3, 

167  ;  xiii.  4-7,  69  n.  ;  xv.  18, 
167  ;  xviii.  18,  284  h.  ;  xx.  7, 
167;  xxii.  20  (R.  v.),  69 «. ; 
xxxiii.  16,  174  «.;  xxxvii.  13 
ff.,  166  n.;  xxxviii.  2,  164  u. ; 
xl.  4  ff.,  166  n.;  xlv.  164  ;z. ; 
xlvi.  2,  6,  10,  69 «. ;  Ii.  63, 
69  n. 

Lamentations,    7   n.,    10;    v.    7, 

168. 
Ezekiel,  7  n. ;  iii.   18  ff.,  89  n. ; 

xiv.  14,  286  n.,  293  n. ;  xxi.  21, 

183  n. ;   xxxvii.    186  n. ;   xxxix. 

II,  69  n. 
Daniel,  7  n. ,  10 ;  xii.  2,  3,  189. 
Hosea,  Book  of,    18;  i.-iii.  158; 

ii.    8,    14  ff.,   266;    ii.    15   and 

xi.   I,  98  n. ;   iii.  4,    183  n. ;   iv. 

6,    159  w. ;   V.  15-vi.  6,    158;/.; 

vi.,  269 ;  vi.  I  f.,  186  n. ;  vi.  6, 


INDEX   OF   SCRIPTURE   REFERENCES     325 


159  «• ;  vii.  I,  14,  158  «. ;  xi. 
I,  160  «.,  266;  xi.  3-4,  159  n.; 
xi.  7  ff.,  158  «. ;  xii.  3-5,  98  n., 
266;  xii.  6,  158  «.  ;  xii.  12,  13, 
98^.;  xiii.  4,  159  n.;  xiii.  7, 
158  «. ;  xiii.  14,  186  n. ;  xiv. 
158  ;/. 

Amos  ii.  9,  98  «. ;  ii.  9-1 1,  266; 
iii.  7,  276;  iv.  21,  266;  V.  3, 
277  ;  V.  22-24,  270;  viii.  5,  272  ; 
ix.  7,  98  u.,  267. 

Jonah,  Book  of,  S6,  89. 

Micah  vii.,  69  n. 

Haggai,  173. 

Zechariah  iii.  173  ;  viii.  4,  186  «., 
X.  2,  183  n. 

Malachi  iii.  20,  70  n. 

Matthew  i.  22,  23,  160  n.;  ii. 
15,  160  n. ;  iv.  4,  7,  163  «. ; 
V.  17,  18,  12  «. ;  V.  21  ff.,  13 
«.  ;  V,  31  ff.,  13  n. ;  v.  38,  43, 
13  «. ;  vii.  12,  12  w. ;  xi.  12  ff., 
13  n. ;  viii.  1-4,  13  n.,  14  «. ; 
xi.  12  ff.,  13  «. ;  xii.  1-2,  14  n. ; 
xvi.  13,  16^  n. ;  xvii.  24-27,  13 
«. ;  xxii.  32,  183  «. ;  xxii.  40, 
12  «. ;  xxiii.  35,  10  «. ;  xxiv. 
27,  13  «. ;  xxvii.  9,  241. 


Mark    vii.    19,    14    n.;    xii.     27, 

183  «. 
Luke  iv.  48,  163  n. ;  x.  7,  14  /?. ; 

xi.  37,   14  «. ;    xiii.   2,  294  «., 

10-17,   14  «•  ;   xiv.  1-6,  14  «.; 

xvi.   16,   13  «. ;   XX.  38,  183  n.; 

xxiv.  44,  10  ;/. 
John  iv.  48,  275;  v.  1-17,  14  n.) 

vii.  294  n. ;  viii.  33  ff.,  89  n. 
Acts,  Book  of,  17  ;  viii.  16,  241. 
Romans  iii.  2,  15  w. ;  iii.  4,  15  n.  ; 

iv.  3'  17,  I5«-;  ix.  4,  15,  17,  20, 

15   n.,    ix.-xi.,     15   ;/. ;    xi.   34, 

I5«.;  XV.  4,  15  «. 

1  Cor.  i.  22,  274;  ii.  9,  17  «. ;  ii. 
9,  18  «. ;  ii.  16,  15  «. ;  ix.  8, 
241;  ix.  9,  18  «. ;  x.  II,  16  n.; 
xii.  9,  241  ;  xiv.  6,  241 ;  xv.  54, 
55,  18  «. 

2  Cor.  iii.  13  ff.,  19  ft. 
Gal.  iv.  22  ff.,  19  n. 

Hebrews,  Epistle  to,  6  n.,  15,  173; 

xi.  27,  17  «. 
James,  6. 
2  Peter,  6  «. 

2  John,  6  «. 

3  John,  6  «. 

Jude,  6  n. ;  ix.  14,  17  n. 


By  GEORGE  ADAM  SMITH,  D.D.,  LL.D. 

The 

Historical  Geography 
of  the  Holy  Land 

Seventh  Edition.    With  Scripture  Index  and  Six  Colored 
Maps,  specially  prepared.     8vo,  cloth,  30  pages,  $4.50 


.  .  .  No  one  work  has  ever  before  embodied  all  this  variety  of  material 
to  illustrate  the  whole  subject.  His  geographical  statements  are  pen-pictures. 
We  are  made  to  see  the  scene.  No  important  problem  is  untouched.  With- 
out question  it  will  take  its  place  at  once  as  a  standard  work,  indispensable  to 
the  thoroughgoing  student  of  the  Bible.  —  Sunday-School  Times. 

.  .  .  An  exliaustive  collection  of  material  lay  outside  the  plan  of  the  author. 
His  intention  is  rather  to  show  how  the  history  of  the  land  is  conditioned  by 
its  physical  structure.  It  is  thus  the  idea  of  Karl  Ritter  which  rules  the  treat- 
ment and  presentation.  Very  comprehensive  sections  are  concerned,  not  with 
the  history,  but  with  the  nature  of  the  land.  .  .  .  The  author  pays  special 
attention  to  the  military  operations.  One  could  sometimes  imagine  that  an 
officer  is  writing,  who,  above  all,  regards  the  land  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
military  strategist.  In  this  connection  especially  the  history  of  Israel  in  its 
chief  crises  in  Old  Testament  times  receives  striking  illumination.  Large  pas- 
sages are  frequently  quoted  from  the  Old  Testament  in  order  to  explain  them 
by  the  exhibition  of  their  geographical  background.  In  addition  the  author 
has  a  special  gift  of  vivid  representation.  He  makes  the  history  transact  itself 
before  the  eye  of  the  reader  in  dramatic  form.  One  sees,  everywhere,  that  the 
landscapes  which  he  describes  stand  before  his  own  eyes.  Thus  the  book  is 
an  extremely  valuable  means  of  aid  to  the  understanding  of  the  history,  espe- 
cially of  the  Old  Testament.  —  Prof.  Schurer,  of  Kiel,  in  the  Theol.  Litera- 
tur-Zeitung. 

The  book  is  too  rich  t©  summarize.  •  .  .  The  language  is  particularly  well 
chosen.  Few  pages  are  without  some  telling  phrase  happily  constructed  to 
attract  attention  and  hold  the  memory,  and  we  often  feel  that  the  wealth  of 
imagery  would  be  excessive  for  prose  were  it  not  that  it  is  chosen  with  such 
appropriateness  and  scientific  truth.  ...  To  the  reader  much  of  the  pleasure 
of  perusing  the  volume  comes  from  its  luxurious  typography,  and  the  exquisite 
series  of  orographical  maps  prepared  by  Mr.  Bartholomew  from  the  work  of 
the  Survey.  These  maps  alone  are  more  suggestive  and  enlightening  than 
many  treatises,  and  they  are  destined,  we  trust,  to  enliven  many  a  sermon,  and 
turn  the  monotony  of  the  records  of  Israelitish  wars  into  a  thrilling  romance.  — 
speaker. 


A.  C.  ARMSTRONG  &  SON 

3  and  5  W.  (5th  Street,  New  York 


By  GEORGE  ADAM  SMITH,  P.P.,  LL.D. 

The  Book  of  Isaiah 

In  Two  Volumes.     Crown  8vo,  cloth,  $1.50  each. 
Volume  I.    Chapters  I.— XXXIX. 
Volume  II.    Chapters  XL.— LXVI. 

This  is  a  noble  volume  of  a  noble  series.  Isaiali  will  ever  be  the  cream  of 
the  Old  Testament  evangelistic  prophecy,  and  as  the  ages  go  on  will  supply 
seed-thought  of  the  Holy  Ghost  which  grow  into  tlowers  and  fruits,  vines 
and  trees,  of  divine  truth  for  the  refreshment  and  nourishment  of  the  intellect, 
heart,  character,  and  life.  How  can  any  pastor  or  iJistructor  of  the  public, 
young  or  old,  afford  to  be  without  siich  aids  ? —  Baltimore  Methodist. 

Prof.  George  Adam  Smith  has  such  a  mastery  of  the  scholarship  of  his 
subject  that  it  would  be  a  sheer  impertinence  for  most  scholars,  even  though 
tolerable  Hebraists,  to  criticise  his  translations  ;  and  certainly  it  is  not  the 
intention  of  the  present  reviewer  to  attempt  anything  of  the  kind,  to  do  which 
he  is  absolutely  incompetent.  All  we  desire  is  to  let  English  readers  know 
how  very  lucid,  ;impressive  —  and,  indeed,  how  vivid  —  a  study  of  Isaiah  is 
within  their  reach  ;  the  fault  of  the  book,  if  it  has  a  fault,  being  rather  that  it 
finds  too  many  points  of  connection  between  Isaiah  and  our  modern  world, 
than  that  it  finds  too  few.  In  other  words,  no  one  can  say  that  the  book  is 
not  full  of  life.  —  Spectator, 

It  would  be  difficult  to  say  how  highly  we  appreciate  the  work,  or  how 
useful  we  believe  it  will  be.  —  Church  Bells. 

He  writes  with  great  rhetorical  power,  and  brings  out  into  vivid  reality  the 
historical  position  of  his  author.  —  Saturday  Review. 

Mr.  Smith  gives  us  models  of  expositions;  expositions  for  cultivated  con- 
gregations, no  doubt,  but  still  expositions  which  may  have  been  largely 
preached  in  church.  They  are  full  of  matter,  and  show  careful  scholarship 
throughout.  We  can  think  of  no  commentary  on  Isaiah  from  which  the 
preacher  will  obtain  scholarly  and  trustworthy  suggestions  for  his  sermons  so 
rapidly  and  so  pleasantly  as  from  this.  —  Record. 

The  Book  of  the  Twelvc  Prophets 

commonly  called  the  minor 

In  Two  Volumes.     Crown  8vo,  cloth,  $1.50  each. 

Vol.  I. —  Amos,  Hosea  and  Micah.     Seventh  Edition. 

Vol.  II. —  Zephaniah,  Nahum,  Habakkuk,  Obadiah, 
Haggai,  Zechariah  I.  —  VIII.,  *' Malachi,"  Joel, 
"Zechariah''  IX.— XIV.,  AND  Jonah.  Fourth  Edition. 

In  Dr.  Smith's  volumes  we  have  much  more  than  a  popular  exposition  of 
the  minor  Prophets.  We  have  that  which  will  satisfy  the  scliolar  and  the  stu- 
dent quite  as  much  as  the  person  who  reads  for  pleasure  and  for  edification. 
...  If  the  minor  Prophets  do  not  become  popular  reading  it  is  not  because 
anything  more  can  be  done  to  make  them  attractive.  Dr.  Smith's  volumes 
present  this  part  of  Scripture  in  what  is  at  once  the  most  attractive  and  the 
most  profitable  form.  —  Dr.  Marcus  Dods,  in  the  British  Weekly. 

Few  interpreters  of  the  Old  Testament  to-day  rank  higher  than  George 
Adam  Smith.  He  is  at  home  in  criticism,  in  geographical  and  archaeological 
questions,  and  in  philology.  .  .  .  Hardly  any  commentator  of  the  present  day 
is  more  successful  than  he  in  putting  the  student  at  once  into  the  heart  of  an 
Old  Testament  problem.  —  S.  S.  Times. 

The  above  four  voUitnes  are  contained  in  *^  The 
Expositor's  Bible,**  and  are  subject  to  special  sub- 
scription rates  in  connection  tvith  that  series. 
Descriptive  circular  on  ajiplication, 

A.  C  ARMSTRONG  &  SON 

3  and  5  W.  J  8th  Street,  New  York 


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